“The idea of completed man is the supreme vanity: the finished image is a sacrilegious myth.” The Chrysalids, John Wyndham

*

February 2006

1

If Rosalyn hadn’t decided to do her Philosophy essay on Utilitarianism, her lecturer would never have given her a list of books on Jeremy Bentham she could use as sources, and if her lecturer had never given her that list of books, she’d never have gone to that section of the library to look for them.  And if the third and fourth books on the list hadn’t already been taken out by someone else, Rosalyn wouldn’t have been looking through the shelves for alternatives, and if she hadn’t been doing that, she’d never have spotted an old book called Daughters of Lilith.  And then she definitely wouldn’t have opened it and seen that folded-up piece of paper between pages 74 and 75.

“Fate,” she declared, to an unimpressed Mariam.

“Hm.”  Mariam picked up the piece of paper (a receipt from somewhere called Fabric City) and read out the message on the back.  “Every moment of your life so far has been leading up to exactly what you’re doing right now…  Sad, isn’t it?  -Kelpie and Silkie.”  Below the signature was a little squiggle that looked a bit like a seal.

“Sea monsters,” said Alex, who was standing at the counter, making a cup of tea.  Pallas House’s kettle was about twenty years old, and had probably been white once.  The same was true of the rest of the kitchen.

“What?”

“Kelpie and Silkie.  They’re monsters from Celtic myths.”  He turned to face them, a big, interested smile on his face.  Alex was twenty-three, about four or five years older than everyone else in the house, but Rosalyn had never got the impression that he was just humouring them when he joined in whatever dumb thing they were talking about.  “I believe the kelpie was a close relation of the Loch Ness monster.  The silkie was more of a shape-shifter.”

Mariam pinched the bridge of her nose, as if they were giving her a headache.  “Alex, please don’t convince Pepper that a Celtic sea monster wrote her a note and hid it in an old book on feminism.”

“But that’s the other amazing thing!” said Rosalyn, “That it’s old!”  She opened it up so that they could see the inside front cover.  “Look at the return record- no-one’s taken it out since 1985!”

“Peps, they don’t even use those return record things anymore.  It’s all done on the machines.”

“Yeah, but those wouldn’t have been installed until, what, 1999 at the earliest?”  She glanced at Alex, who shrugged.  “That’s still more than a decade that it definitely didn’t get taken out.”

“If that’s actually the front page.”  Mariam lifted up the return record, and looked at the three or four pages glued underneath.  “There could have been others that just fell off when the glue dried up.”

Rosalyn pointed at it.  “There’s a gap at the bottom- see?  It would have been stamped there the next time it was taken out.”

Mariam glanced at the gap, then looked back up at Rosalyn, giving her one of her weird crooked smiles, the ones that went at an odd angle and seemed to dig into one side of her face.  “Alright then.  It really hasn’t been taken out since 1985.”  She didn’t add anything about that fact not automatically proving the existence of fate.  Rosalyn thought she was probably hoping to convey that through the smile.  “So who do you think wrote the note?”

“Somebody who knows a lot about sea monsters,” said Alex, placing cups of tea in front of Mariam and Rosalyn.  Neither of them had asked for one.  Alex just tended to assume everyone wanted tea.

“Somebody who knows their names,” said Mariam, “Their names aren’t ‘a lot.’”  She paused, then added in a quieter voice, “And thanks for the tea.”

“My pleasure,” said Alex.  He sat down and put his elbows on the table, leaning forward and grinning as if he was about to share some ancient wisdom.  “You know, there are a lot of legends about buildings and towns having guardian spirits….”

Mariam put her head in her hands.  “Oh my God, you do think a sea monster wrote that note.”

“Well, not a sea monster per se.  This book was in a library about a hundred miles from the sea, after all.”

“Right, because that would be too much of a stretch.  That a sea monster would be in a landlocked library.  If we were in Brighton, we could totally believe it.  They probably visit libraries there all the time.”

“Well, Brighton’s a town with a lot of historical significance, but I think you’d have better luck in Cornwall or Inverness.  The original myths say…”

At that point, they heard the front door creak open.  Their other flatmates were home.

“Isaac!  Natalie!” called Alex, “Pull up a chair!  We’re discussing guardian spirits!”

“No, we’re not!” squawked Mariam.

Isaac and Natalie wandered in, looking bemused.  Natalie looked from Alex to Mariam, and decided to address her question to Rosalyn instead.  “Guardian spirits?” she asked, her mouth curling up in a smile.

Rosalyn shrugged her shoulders, then felt a little bad about it.  It felt as if Natalie was drawing her into a joke about how badly Alex and Mariam were overreacting, which would be a bit hypocritical on Rosalyn’s part, since she’d started it.  “I was just telling them what I found in the library.”  She handed Natalie the note.  “It was folded up in this old book that hasn’t been taken out since the Eighties.  It’s probably been there for years.”

Natalie took it and read it.  “Kelpie and Silkie?”

“Alex says they’re sea monsters,” said Rosalyn, grinning.

“Technically water monsters, in the kelpie’s case,” added Alex, “They live in Scottish lochs.”

“I see,” said Natalie diplomatically.  She looked at the receipt again.  “This is pretty cool.  Leaving a note in a book for a stranger twenty years in the future.”

 “We don’t know the note’s been there for twenty years,” said Mariam, but without much rancour.  At this point, she was just playing out the role she’d been given at the start of the conversation.  You always needed a hapless sceptic to ignore.

 “I think I’ve heard that before,” said Isaac, “Kelpie and Silkie, I mean.”

 “Well, they’re mythical…” began Alex.

“No, no- I’ve seen something signed ‘Kelpie and Silkie.’  Some graffiti somewhere.”  Isaac stared down at the note, as if he was trying to intimidate it into giving up its secrets.  Isaac had a thin, pointy face that tended towards exaggerated expressions.  If he was even slightly annoyed, he looked as if he was plotting to tear somebody’s heart out with his bare hands.  He usually wasn’t.

Alex raised his eyebrows.  “Something around here?”

“Dunno.  Maybe.”  Isaac had his hands on his hips and his elbows stuck out in perfect triangles, like a stick figure cartoon.

“Oh, speaking of weird things around here,” said Natalie, “You know that house on the corner?  The one with the green blinds?  Well, they’ve had garbage all over their driveway for the last three days.”

“What kind of garbage?” asked Mariam.

“Just… the entire contents of their bins, it looks like.  Food wrappers and tampon boxes and stuff that’s gone off.  I mean, if it was any other house, I’d just think they’d gone on holiday and a fox got at their binbags, but…”

The others nodded.  The house with the green blinds was just plain weird. 

“Has anyone ever actually seen the people who live there?” asked Rosalyn.  The others made vague, negative noises.

“I definitely heard them once,” said Natalie, “They were yelling at the tops of their voices.  It sounded like a man and woman.”

Mariam grinned.  “And then, the next day, there was a sinister bloodstain on the front door?”

“Like you’d even notice.  The whole place is covered in sinister stains.”

Isaac twitched.  It was a whole-body twitch, as if he’d just put his fingers in an electric socket.  “I know where I’ve seen it!” he said, looking up at them in sheer delight, “It’s at the park!  On one of those old brick walls!”

It took Rosalyn a couple of seconds to remember what he was referring to.  “The Kelpie and Silkie graffiti, you mean?  What does it say?”

“Something about bees, I think.  Do you want to go and see it?”

The other four glanced at each other.  “What, now?” asked Natalie.

Isaac shrugged.  “Why not?”

*

Realistically, there was no reason for all of them to go down to the park, but nobody wanted to be left out.  Of the five of them, only Alex and Mariam had driving licenses, and the only car Mariam was insured for was her parents’ Mini back in Bradford, so Isaac spent the journey crammed in between Natalie and Rosalyn in the back of Alex’s tiny Ford Focus.  He’d had worse evenings.

One of the things Isaac liked best about university were the endless opportunities it provided to go out and spontaneously do something pointless.  Back home, your friends would need to check their schedules and your family would want to know exactly why you wanted to go to the costume shop halfway across town (to pick just one example).  Here, they mostly just agreed, because the alternative was usually hanging around the pub or, Heaven forbid, getting a head start on your coursework.  You could actually do something in the evening without having to spend an hour justifying it.

Mariam was in the passenger seat, complaining about her job.  Mariam worked at the Student Union on campus, and, according to her, most of her duties involved herding irritating manchildren.  “You know, since starting there I’ve got completely sick of the word ‘retarded’.”

Natalie shrugged her shoulders, which had the effect of dragging Isaac’s shoulders along for the ride.  “Well, as words go, it’s an easy one to get sick of.”

“I didn’t even find it offensive until they started saying it.  It’s their go-to word every time something doesn’t go their way.  And they all say it in the same whiny voice, too.  ‘That last episode was totally re-taaaaaar-ded’.”

Isaac shifted.  It was hard to know what to do with your arms in a situation like this.  Fold them, and you looked like you were sulking.  Stretch them out behind both girls’ shoulders, and you just looked like a wanker.

“The worst part- the worst part, right?- is when we have to host those bloody anime and video game clubs.  There’s always some twat who talks over everyone else and acts like the whole club’s just their loyal court.”

“You get that in any group, though,” said Natalie, “You should see our English Literature seminars.”

Mariam grinned.  “Let me guess- ‘People who say Shakespeare had more cultural impact than Christopher Marlowe are just ignorant children who don’t yet understand how the world works.’”

Natalie laughed, inadvertently tossing her hair into Isaac’s face.  For as long as Isaac had known her, Natalie’s hair had been shoulder-length and neatly cut, but it still managed to look like something out of a Renaissance painting.  It was a mass of strawberry-blonde waves that made you think of sunsets and apricots.

“‘All those Jane Austen fangirls who drool over Mr Darcy make me feel ashamed to be female.  I wonder if they’ll ever realise how re-taaaaar-ded they sound,’” continued Mariam.

“Yep, you’ve got it.  Just add a bunch of pontificating about how there are only seven basic plots and there hasn’t been a decent novel written since Ernest Hemingway died.”

“Right, so imagine that, but about Legend of frigging Zelda.”

Alex pulled into a parking space and undid his seatbelt.  “Here we are!” he said (a bit unnecessarily, since they all knew what the park looked like, but Isaac supposed it was more polite than, “Get out of my car, you bunch of freeloaders!” or something).

It was one of those February days that tricked you.  The weather was fresh and temperate, and so warm that you started to think that spring was finally on its way.  Which meant that tomorrow there would probably be a blizzard.

“How’s your job going?” Mariam asked Isaac as they crossed the road.

Isaac shrugged.  “Not bad.  You get the odd annoying customer, but management lets you shoot them.”

Mariam nodded, keeping her face straight.  “Oh yes, the famous Lambton Theatre shotgun.  We’ve all heard stories.”

Isaac found what he was looking for on an old crumbling wall near the cricket club headquarters.  Going out to do something pointless was its own reward, obviously, but the way Rosalyn’s face lit up when he pointed out the graffiti made his heart grow three or four sizes in a second.  There was something about Rosalyn that had that effect on you, and it probably had something to do with her height (five foot nothing) and her big, sad eyes.  She was like a tiny kitten that had been transformed into a human being and forced to go to university.  “If you’ve got any gossip, tell the bees,” she read, “For the love of God tell the bees!  Kelpie and Silkie.  What do you think it means?”

Isaac shrugged.  “Bees like them some gossip, I guess.”

“It’s definitely the same signature as the one from the book.  That squiggly line.”  Rosalyn inched forward to point at it, but didn’t quite dare to touch it.  You’d have thought it was a museum piece.

Alex circled around to get a better look.  Isaac noticed, for the fourth or fifth time, that he walked with a limp.  Not a massive one, or anything- just, one of his legs always seemed to move slower than the other.  “You’re right,” he told Rosalyn, “It does look like a seal.”

Natalie took a couple of steps closer.  “Shame none of us are studying forensic science,” she said, “Then we could…”

And that was when the bomb went off.

Not that any of them realised it was a bomb right away.  It just looked as if somebody had thrown a brick through the cricket club windows from the inside.  A thousand shards of glass sprayed out over the patio and grass around the building, and when Isaac flinched away, he crashed into Natalie and sent them both flying.

Then, all of a sudden, it seemed like everyone else in the entire park was running toward them.  Isaac hadn’t even noticed more than about half a dozen people as they’d walked towards the graffiti wall, but now they seemed to be coming out of the trees or something.  Isaac, sprawled across the grass, struggled to pull himself up.  Almost immediately, he felt Natalie’s hands on his shoulders.  She’d managed to move quicker than he had, then.  “Don’t get up too fast,” she told him, “You might make things worse.”

“What things?” he asked, “Anyway, I’m sorry for knocking you over.”

Natalie patted his shoulder.  “Don’t worry.”

There were voices coming from every direction, mostly ones Isaac didn’t recognise.  Questions like what the fuck was that and has anybody called an ambulance, one old woman wailing oh my God, oh my God over and over, a few people exclaiming about terrorists and criminals and what should be done to them.  Behind it, he caught Alex, Mariam and Rosalyn’s voices a little way off, so at least he knew they were still alive.

His forehead felt damp.  He put his hand up to check, and it came away covered in blood.

He glanced up at Natalie.  “It doesn’t even hurt,” he said, almost laughing.

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