The Ninth circle

27th November

I know at last who’s been putting notes under my door. And the identity of this person appals me. In fact, the sender is the one person I thought I could be absolutely and completely, one hundred percent sure was innocent.

These last few weeks seem to have passed so quickly. The temperature has dropped sharply, the leaves have all fallen, leaving the trees skeletal and naked, and it now truly feels like winter here. I have continued to meet up with Stephomi regularly and there have been no more distressing or disturbing revelations; and, much to my pleasure, I’ve found myself very much enjoying his company once again. I’ve also seen Casey several times and she’s always greeted me warmly. We are real neighbours at last. A familiar face right next door to me.

That’s why I’ve neglected the journal these past few weeks — because I’ve been happy. Looking back through these pages, I realise that I tend to write in here when I’m unhappy. But lately I have been too involved with actually living to spend all my time whining about life in this book.

It’s strange but the pages and pages of my writing in this journal really do comfort me. The paper has a different feel to it once it has been written on. The pages curl a little and do not stick together any more. And the paper becomes heavy with ink, taking on an uneven, crackly kind of texture. A book full of my words, my thoughts, my life. Perhaps that’s why I’m so fond of this journal — even now, I’m scared that I might forget everything again and this book is a safety net against that, for everything is here and written down and permanent, not to be lost again.

But something upsetting happened last week. I’d been dining late in the city and was walking from the metro station back to my apartment block. I was almost at the entrance when I stopped short in amazement. A woman had just walked out the doors of my building. The street outside was not very well lit so I couldn’t see her clearly. All I could make out was that she was wearing a dark evening dress with black gloves that reached up to her elbows. I couldn’t help but notice that she wore no coat, and it occurred to me how cold she must be, this late at night. Her long black hair was piled up on her head, and what looked like diamonds glittered at her throat and on her wrist. The stiletto heels of her strappy evening shoes clicked smartly on the sidewalk as she walked towards me.

She should surely know better than to come out on such a night with no protection from the cold, I thought. It was past midnight and no time for an attractive woman to be wandering around on her own. Streets that would be safe during the day could become dangerous at night. But there was something about the way she walked and held herself that suggested she was not afraid of the dark or what might be waiting in it for her. I drew breath anyway to ask if she had far to go, with the vague idea of offering to accompany her if her destination was very far. But as she passed me, she looked up, and weak light from a nearby streetlamp fell across part of her face, and the words died on my lips as she smiled slightly and carried on walking past me. For I was sure that this woman had been the Lilith of my dreams. Even as I turned and watched her striding away, I told myself I must have been mistaken. Stephomi had said that Lilith haunted places by the sea. Legend said that she flew though the night in search of her infant-victims. She would not have emerged from my shabby apartment block, dressed in all her evening finery, to walk the streets of Budapest.

But I had to know. I had to be sure that it wasn’t her. So I turned back with the idea of catching up with her, but a frightened female cry from within the apartment block stopped me. I stood rooted with indecision for only a moment, watching the woman walk off into the darkness, listening to the click click of her heels, before I turned and ran into my apartment building, stopping short in the doorway in horror.

Casey was stood in the dimly lit lobby surrounded by three young men pressed in around her. One of them had hold of her bag and was trying to prise it from her grip but she was hanging on to the straps with both hands, pleading with her attackers while they laughed at her, delighted that she was making this so much fun for them.

Just give them the bag, I thought. What does it matter?

But the month’s worth of rent she had in her purse meant that she wouldn’t willingly be giving it to anyone. Was she really so naive that she didn’t think they’d hurt her if they had to? What good was a grotty old apartment if you were dead? Or if your baby was dead? What good would it be to you then? I could see tears running down her face as one of the men grabbed and twisted her arm, pulling it back roughly and tearing the bag from her hand while another mugger cupped a hand round her neck in a mocking caress, running his fingers through the dark strands of her hair.

‘How about some sugar for Daddy, pretty lady?’ he murmured greasily. Leaning towards her, he forced a kiss to her mouth, but then drew back sharply, his lip bleeding from where Casey had bitten him.

‘You fucking bitch!’ he snarled, spitting bloody spit into her face and then hitting her hard with the back of his hand.

And the desire to kill them all where they stood rose up within me, shaking me from the inside, and it took everything I had to fight the urge down. It is wrong to kill people. It is wrong.

‘ Hey! ’ I shouted, drawing their attention away from Casey. Rage boiling up inside, I strode forwards into the room and the three youths turned mockingly towards me, one of them still casually swinging Casey’s bag from the straps twined round his arm. ‘That was a mistake,’ I said quietly, enjoying the promise for what it was.

I don’t believe I seriously hurt them… Well, there were no fatal injuries, anyway. They were cowards, so it didn’t take much for them to turn and run. And I was prepared this time for the shocking, powerful surges of exhilaration that swept through me as soon as I hit the first attacker full in the face, relishing the feel of his nose crunching beneath my fist. I didn’t let myself get carried away, even though hurting them filled me with such savage pleasure. This was even easier than it had been last time, for there had been five men then and they had been much bigger than these three teenagers.

The first mugger staggered back whimpering, blood pouring from his broken nose, while the other two came at me at once, one of them with a knife in his hand. But the problem with weapons is that they make people over-confident. It was so easy to take it from him that it almost seemed like he was giving it to me. If he’d just been another mugger, I would have thrown the knife down, but this was the kid who had hit Casey after kissing her and before I knew what I was doing I was pinning him to the wall, about to slice the knife straight through his throat.

His two friends had gone completely still, like statues, staring at us in the lobby. The blade was right there at his neck — one movement of my wrist and he would be dead. This was justice. He was despicable. He was prepared to steal from a pregnant teenager and then assault her. He didn’t deserve to live. Cut the throat — nice and quick. I prepared to do so. And then suddenly caught myself.

He was looking right at me — brown eyes shocked and terrified. I stared at him, taken aback. How had I got here like this? What was I thinking? Casey was crying in the corner and it was this sound that at last snapped me out of it. I dropped the knife like it was burning me. Then I grabbed the boy’s arm and gave him a shove towards his two friends. All three of them were staring at me like frightened rabbits and suddenly the three muggers were gone and I saw three children in their place, barely older than Casey was herself. I ran my eye over them anxiously but apart from the one with the broken nose they didn’t seem too badly hurt.

I took a step towards them and they shrank back in unison. I stopped and when I spoke my voice sounded low and frightening even to myself. ‘If you ever touch my friend over there again, if you ever look at her, if you ever come anywhere near her, I promise I’ll track you down and I’ll kill you.’

I could tell from their expressions that they knew I meant what I’d said. They knew it wasn’t an empty threat. They knew I would kill them without even a second thought. Indeed I had almost done so just mere seconds ago. It terrified me. Perhaps, in that moment, I was even more scared of myself than they were. They were all still staring at me in silence as if too afraid to move but I needed them gone. The boy’s brown eyes felt like they were boring into my soul.

‘Get out,’ I said, my voice barely above a whisper.

As if released by an invisible spring, all three of them scrambled for the door and a moment later they were gone.

I am a madman, lock me away. What had I almost just done? God, am I really that unstable? It was simply that he had made me so angry, hurting Casey like that. He was a threat to her so I wanted to get rid of him. But killing him was the first way I had thought to do so and that appalled me.

I think if I’d been by myself I would have run up to my apartment, locked all the doors, turned the lights off and just rocked back and forth for hours with my arms wrapped over my head, alone in the dark. But Casey was there and she needed me, so, with a great effort, I pulled myself together. Stifling the familiar nausea, I wiped the blood off my hands, brushed the hair out of my eyes and walked over to her where she was still sobbing in the corner by the stairs. She screamed when I touched her and lashed out at me instinctively, hardly seeming to know who I was.

‘Hey!’ I cried. ‘Casey, it’s me. It’s Gabriel. It’s okay, they’ve gone. They’ve all gone. They won’t be coming back.’

I wasn’t expecting her to turn and cling to me as she did, crying into my shirt, her body trembling against mine. I was taken aback for a moment but I recovered quickly and put my arms around her, speaking to her softly while the hysteria died down. She hadn’t been badly hurt, although there would be a black eye later. But she had been frightened, of course, for herself and the easily hurt baby she carried. As I held her I instantly began to feel calmer about what had just happened. Casey had been in danger and I had protected her and that was all there was to it. None of those boys had been seriously hurt and, who knew, perhaps they would think twice about attacking anyone else in the future. Perhaps they would stay at home and do their schoolwork instead. Perhaps their lives would be better for what I had done!

The aura around Casey was golden today and, as I held her, it expanded to encompass both of us. I gazed in amazement at it, over the top of Casey’s head, wondering how she could be unaware of such beauty. When she had calmed down at last, I picked up her bag from where the muggers had dropped it and took her back upstairs to her apartment. She had stopped crying but she was still shaking and when I asked if she’d like me to stay with her for a while, she accepted at once.

Casey still looked deathly white so I made her sit down at the small kitchen table. I boiled the kettle and made tea for her. I gave her a frozen bag of vegetables to press to her already swelling eye. I looked after her. She belonged to me and I was going to keep her safe. I put a mug of tea before her and sat down at the other side of the table.

‘Why didn’t you just give them the bag?’ I asked quietly. ‘Why didn’t you just give it to them?’

‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘I panicked. I just panicked. Our rent was in there.’

I sighed. ‘Look, Casey, if anything like that ever happens to you again, just give them what they want and then run away as fast as you can. It doesn’t matter if you’re handing over your whole life savings; just give them what they want. It’s not worth your life.’

Casey nodded. ‘I know… It’s just that nothing like that’s ever happened to me before. My parents have a lot of money. We always lived in a nice area…’ she trailed off.

‘If I give you the money you would get in wages, will you stay here in your apartment at night?’ I asked suddenly.

She winced at the suggestion. ‘Gabriel, I can’t do that,’ she said. ‘I can’t take money from you.’

‘The money doesn’t matter to me,’ I said quickly. ‘I’m very well off, trust me, I won’t miss it. Look, you can’t just think about yourself now, you have to think about your baby too. Please let me help you. I really don’t want anything in return.’

She hesitated for a moment, biting her lip. Then she nodded silently, tears welling in her eyes again, and told me the truth about how her parents had disowned her after finding out she was pregnant, and how she had panicked and fled to the city, taking her younger brother with her.

‘We had all these screaming arguments,’ she said miserably. ‘I’ll never be able to forget some of the things they said to me. My dad called me a liar and a… a filthy slut. I mean, I’ve never even kissed a boy, not properly, not on the mouth… unless you count what just happened downstairs. I did kiss Harry on the cheek once — you know, the boyfriend I had when I was fourteen — does that count? Does it? I couldn’t even look at my Dad in the end because he didn’t even try to disguise the disgust he felt for me, and I just couldn’t bear to see that expression on his face when he looked at me.

‘They said that me and my boyfriend had to learn some responsibility. They said he would have to support me even though I kept telling them there was no boyfriend. I had nowhere to go so I went to my grandparents and asked if I could stay with them, but they said they couldn’t have me in the house. It wasn’t their place to go against my parents’ wishes, they said. Do you know what it feels like to get to the point where you can’t ask for help any more because you know that if you get told “no” one more time by one more person you’ll lose it?

‘That’s why I wanted Toby with me. He never blamed me and he was the only one who believed me. I never had sex with anyone but even if I had, would it really be so bad that they should all turn on me like that? I can’t think of anything awful enough Toby could do that would make me stop loving him. And what does it matter to my parents if he lives with me? They were never around anyway! I was afraid that they might take him away and I’d never see him again. So I took him with me when I left. We stayed in a shelter for a while before we moved here.. but I can’t look after him. I have no money — my parents have cut me off from the accounts I had before, so I can’t use my credit cards any more. It’s just that I didn’t want to be completely on my own, with no family at all. Can you understand that?’

Ah, yes, I could understand that far better than she knew.

‘You’re not going to turn me in, are you?’ she asked, glancing up at me.

I shook my head. ‘I just want to help you, that’s all. I would never do anything you didn’t want me to, I promise. You don’t have to be scared to ask me for help.’

Casey smiled at me and I saw a mixture of doubt and hope in her face.

‘Where did you learn to fight like that anyway?’ she asked.

I hesitated, hoping she hadn’t seen me almost cut that boy’s throat. Should I tell her the truth? Could I risk undoing the trust I’d manage to build up between us?

‘You have skeletons in your closet too, don’t you?’ she asked, smiling softy. ‘It’s okay, you don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to.’

And I had to tell her then because the way she’d said it and the kind smile she’d given me made me feel like a bastard for not trusting her enough in the first place when she had openheartedly trusted me with her secrets. And to my surprise and pleasure, she did not denounce me for a raving madman after I’d finished. She didn’t shrink from me in uncertainty and fear.

‘I’m sorry I lied to you… I just didn’t want you to think I was crazy or something.’

‘Yes, I understand why you did it.’

‘Do you believe me, then? You don’t think I’m making all this up?’

‘A few days ago I told you that there was no father to my child,’ she said wryly. ‘The idea that you might be suffering from amnesia is not hard for me to believe, even if you don’t trust my story.’

I hesitated, feeling guilty.

‘It’s okay. I know how it sounds,’ she said with a shrug. ‘Foolishly get yourself in trouble and then claim a Virgin Mary… But, Gabriel, in this day and age, why on earth would I say such a thing if it wasn’t true? When I know that people will denounce me for a slut and a whore as soon as I start claiming to be a pregnant virgin? I’m not stupid, although people often seem to think otherwise because of the dyed hair and the piercings and the tattoos. But for God’s sake, if I was going to lie about it, I would have said I’d been raped. People would have believed that and pitied me then instead of scorning me and looking at me with disgust. I wish I’d told my parents I was raped now. Then I’d still be at home, with everyone I love fussing over me. I would never have had to realise how little they cared about me. I would have just gone on thinking they were the people I’d always believed them to be.’

She wasn’t lying to me. I could see it in her face — not only did she think she was telling the truth, she was telling the truth. Perhaps I have known that all along. Perhaps I just didn’t like to think that she was mixed up in all this too. I wanted better for her than that. I wanted her to have normalcy — even if that normalcy was as a struggling single mother with no family, no money and no one to help her.

‘I’m sorry,’ I said, trying to keep the weariness out of my voice as I accepted the idea. ‘I do believe you.’

When I saw that she was doubtful, I told her a little about my own recent experiences. Not the whole of it, of course, for I had no wish to scare her. So I didn’t tell her of the burning demon who had almost decapitated Stephomi outside Michael’s church or of the strange notes I had been sent. I didn’t tell her of the black fur and the claw marks and the cracked mirror in Stephomi’s hotel room… I knew that Casey was religious, for she had told me before that her whole family were Catholic. But most religious people, even if they do believe in a vague way in angels and their demonic counterparts, do not believe that devils and angels walk the Earth in a more physical manner — brandishing large swords, ripping hotel curtains to shreds, leaving black fur all over the cream suite, freezing wine solid in long stemmed wine glasses…

But I did tell her that I had known my share of strangeness since coming to Budapest. That I sometimes seemed to be haunted by strange dreams and waking visions that I couldn’t shake. That something followed me through the days and nights… And she believed me. In fact, she seemed incredibly relieved that someone other than her had experienced things they could not explain. Things that haunted them and made them fear they were going mad.

When I at last got up to go, Casey pressed a string of prayer beads into my palm; the smooth feel of them and the soft click of the wood as the beads fell against each other was incredibly soothing and reassuring. I returned to my apartment aware that there were barriers between us that had been swept down beautifully that evening.

If I had ever had a daughter, I would have wished her to be just like Casey. Had I loved Luke like this? Was this what it had felt like? The conviction that you would do anything… anything to keep them safe from whatever might try to hurt them. I let Luke down, didn’t I? A parent is supposed to keep their child safe. There should never ever be any need for those tiny little coffins. Not because of illness, not because of negligence, not because of accident… Children should not die. Old people die. Adults, sometimes. But not children. I don’t know why God doesn’t forbid it. I won’t let anything happen to Casey. I’d die before I let anything hurt her.

After the incident with Casey and her attackers, life was uneventful for a week, and this lulled me into a false sense of security. The weather continued to cool and Budapest became laced with frosts during the night — frosts that melted away quickly as soon as the sun came up, shining down on the city with all the sharp, clear, freshness of a winter’s day.

There had been no notes or visions or strange dreams. There had been no nocturnal visits from Lilith, even after I stopped taking the sleeping drugs. And life had seemed sweet to me, like nectar. But then, yesterday, I received another note. Like the first one, it had been slipped under the door and spelt out in block capitals but it was written in Italian rather than Latin:

PER ME SI VA NELLA CITTA’DOLENTE.

PER ME SI VANELL’ETERNO DOLORE.

PER ME SI VA TRA LA PERDUTA GENTE…

LASCIATE OGNI SPERANZA VOI CH’ENTRATE!

This quote is from Dante and translated into English it reads:

Through me one goes to the sorrowful city.

Through me one goes to eternal suffering.

Through me one goes among lost people…

Abandon all hope, you who enter!

The passage is straight from the Divina Commedia itself, Inferno III, which sees Dante and Virgil passing through the Gates of Hell on which the famous words are engraved. I can’t say that the words did not chill me. But, unlike those passing through Hell’s Gates, I did have some hope left. For now at last I would know who had sent me these notes.

After the initial twinges of foreboding, my first feeling was one of triumph. I had caught the little shit in the act. At last I would have the identity of my anonymous tormenter. I would know who had been sending me these threatening things. And then I would therefore also know who had stitched photos into the backs of antique books and hidden them in crates of wine. I would know who had stood in the hotel room in Paris and photographed Stephomi and me. And I would know who had killed Anna Sovanak. At last I would know what twisted man dropped her body into the sea, contained in a crate, and left her there for months before raising her to the surface, transporting her across Italy and Austria back to Hungary to deposit before the weeping willow memorial in the centre of Budapest for all to see when her ocean-bloated corpse washed out onto the street. This sick bastard had wanted her to be discovered in a public and sensationalist manner. Had he been trying to make the front page, perhaps? The story certainly should have made headlines and its banishment to page six was worrying in itself.

I had already drawn the uncomfortable conclusion that this man, too, was known to me before I lost my memory. He had been there with Stephomi and I in Paris, and he knew that I understood Latin and Italian and he had my address in Budapest. I very much hoped that we had been on bad terms, for I hated the thought that I had kept such vile company. When I took the camera down from the wall to replay the video, I half feared that the man might have seen the camera and somehow disabled it, or that there would be just blank, unexplained snow filling the screen. But the camera had not been tampered with and after watching it I did indeed have the identity of the note sender.

But I couldn’t believe it. I must have watched and re-watched the tape at least a dozen times to be sure that I was not somehow imagining it. Even when I was quite certain what the camera showed, I still thought that there might be a mistake or another explanation somehow. That it couldn’t possibly be what it seemed.

The only thing to be done was to confront him. And it seemed so unlikely and incredible that if he had told me he hadn’t done it then I think I would have believed him over the evidence of my own eyes. But when I went round to Casey’s apartment that evening and told her I needed to speak to Toby, and that it couldn’t wait until the morning, she went and got him up and brought him into the kitchen and I could see by the guilt in his eyes as soon as I held out the note that the camera had not lied and that it had indeed been Toby March who had been putting these threatening things under my door.

I knew that Toby couldn’t possibly have written the notes himself. Not unless he could read and write in ancient Latin. No, the deliverer and the sender must be different people altogether. Toby could be nothing more than an agent. Whoever the perpetrator of this scheme was, he had managed to find out who my neighbours were and had somehow bribed Toby to deliver these notes in secret. I remembered back to when I had received the first note a month ago, and had chased the fleeing footsteps down to the lobby where I had seen Toby loitering by the door before Casey found him and they left the building together. It was clear now why Toby had always seemed so nervous at the sight of me, and had been so uncomfortable in my company. It had never occurred to me that the nine-year-old might somehow be involved in all this — that the one responsible could be wretched enough to involve a child in this sordid mess.

‘Can you understand what these say?’ I asked, holding up the first note as well as the one I had received that evening.

Toby shook his head silently. Although my eyes were fixed on Toby, I could also see Casey out of the corner of my eye, gazing curiously at the notes, clearly puzzled as to what this had to do with her younger brother. She obviously could not read Italian either, for if she had understood the neatly printed messages, I am sure she would have been more visibly concerned.

‘Why have you been putting them under my door?’ I asked.

Casey turned sharply to her brother. ‘I most certainly hope you haven’t been putting anything under Gabriel’s door, Toby!’

The boy stood there, hesitating, glancing anxiously at his sister then back at me and then at his feet, shuffling nervously where he stood.

I felt I couldn’t bear the tense agony of waiting for him to tell me what he knew. My thoughts flew around chaotically, accusing everyone in turn: perhaps Stephomi had bribed Toby. Perhaps these things were his doing. Perhaps he was the unseen puppet master. Then again, perhaps there was no human agent at all. Perhaps the references to the dreaded Ninth Circle had come from some other thing’s realm altogether. Perhaps it had been the burning demon himself who had convinced Toby to be the deliveryman of these ominous portents. To my shame, my suspicions even rested briefly on Casey, but I quickly rejected this. I would not… could not believe that she had anything to do with this. I couldn’t bear it any longer. The cold and fearful suspicions against all those around me; the distrusting of friends; the total, blind ignorance of the unseen agendas gathering around me. I felt if I didn’t find out the identity of this contemptible, cowardly tormenter… this wretched, disgusting excuse for a human being… then I would surely go mad right there on the spot.

‘Please, Toby,’ I said, desperately, barely managing to resist the urge to shake him, ‘please tell me who gave you those notes to deliver.’

The boy bit his lip, brown eyes troubled, before at last giving me the answer: ‘You did.’

My thoughts collapsed in on themselves, leaving in their wake a deafeningly loud silence as I stood there staring at the kid.

‘Are you sure?’ I croaked at last.

‘There are some more in my bedroom,’ Toby said uncertainly. ‘You said I had to put them under the door on the sixth of every month starting from October, and that you mustn’t see me doing it or the deal would be off.’

‘Deal?’ I repeated blankly.

‘Start from the beginning,’ Casey ordered. ‘When did Gabriel ask you to do this?’

‘I dunno exactly when,’ Toby replied. ‘Some time in July. He said that if I delivered these notes when he said, without being seen, then he’d give me a thousand dollars.’

‘He said what?’ Casey repeated, looking horrified.

‘And a thousand more when he found out I was the sender.’

‘You mean I anticipated discovering your identity?’ I asked, staring at him.

Toby shrugged.

‘Toby, how could you accept money from a stranger? And that much? Where is it now? How have you been hiding it from me?’

‘It’s under my mattress,’ Toby said, slightly sulkily, obviously realising that he was going to be in trouble over this.

‘Go and fetch it right now,’ Casey ordered.

‘But Casey, you said we needed more money and-’

‘Toby! Fetch the money now. I won’t ask you again.’

With a scowl, Toby turned and stalked to his room.

‘I’m sorry,’ I said, turning to her after her brother had gone off. ‘I… I don’t know what to say to you. I don’t remember any of it.’

Casey flashed me a brief, worried smile. ‘It’s okay. We’ll get to the bottom of it.’

When Toby returned, he was holding two black bags. The larger of the two he handed to his sister, who tipped the contents out onto the kitchen table and gasped involuntarily at the stacks of crisp, new dollar bills that piled up before us. There certainly looked like there was a thousand dollars’ worth there. Thrusting the money back into the bag, Casey handed it over to me.

‘You’d better take this.’

‘But, if I promised, Toby-’ I began, but Casey shook her head and cut me off.

‘Look, I don’t want to offend you, Gabriel, but we don’t know where that money came from. It… it could be stolen.’

I nodded bleakly and glanced apologetically at Toby. ‘I can give you the same in florints,’ I began, but again Casey rejected the offer firmly.

‘Toby should know better than ever to take money in the first place,’ she said. ‘You’re helping me out while I’m not working. I think you’re doing more than enough for us already. What’s in the other bag, Toby?’

‘Gabriel said he wouldn’t remember asking me to do this and, er.. he wasn’t sure how long it would take for him to work it out, so he gave me copies and said to give whatever was left back to him when he found out. And you wanted this back too,’ Toby said, drawing a computer disc in a plastic case from the second bag.

The other A4 pages Toby gave me all carried copies of the two messages I had already received. There were five copies of each message, making ten pages altogether. I must have been overly cautious, for there was no way that the anonymous letter sending would have gone on for ten months without my finding out who the sender was. It had been obvious and easy enough to fix a surveillance camera above the apartment door.

I gazed at the computer disc in its protective plastic packaging, clasped between my thumb and forefinger. It had been a complete dead end. As soon as the programme loaded up, I was presented with a black screen with one small central box requiring a password. There was only room for eight digits, and I had already spent hours and hours typing in all manner of words in an effort to crack the code. I was on the verge of losing my temper with it. Why bother to go to all the trouble of hiding the disc in such a manner if it wasn’t important? What the bloody hell was the point of a disc I couldn’t access?

Had I really been trying to torment myself with those notes? What kind of twisted and depraved man had I been before that I would spend time planning such madness? Had I also been responsible for the photos hidden in my deliveries? There had to be more than one person involved. I couldn’t be responsible for all that had happened. For one thing, I couldn’t have been the photographer who took the picture of Stephomi and me in Paris, because I was in the picture myself. Nor could I have possibly moved Anna Sovanak’s body, unless I have taken to vast nocturnal journeys that I then have no recollection of in the morning.

In the end, I took all these things with me to the Hilton and confronted Stephomi with them when we met for a drink in the Faust wine cellar beneath the hotel that afternoon.

‘You told me you thought you knew who was sending these,’ I said, spreading the notes out on the table. ‘I need you to tell me.’

Stephomi picked up the two handwritten notes he had not seen, and glanced at them in distaste before dropping them back on the table. Then he leaned back in his chair with a sigh.

‘Tell me,’ I repeated. ‘Please, Stephomi. I think I already know but I’ll confirm it on my own somehow if I have to.’

‘All right,’ he said, setting his wine glass back on the table. ‘You sent them all yourself.’

‘All of them?’

‘Yes. I don’t know about these notes but I expect you had the photos hidden in packages addressed to you, and then asked the sender to post them to your new address on a certain date, using some pretext or other.’

‘And who is the photographer in this?’ I asked, holding up the photo of Stephomi and I.

‘You,’ my friend replied. ‘The camera was hidden and on a timer.’

‘And why would I send myself a photo warning against you?’

The scholar smiled wryly. ‘Because you know me too well, Gabriel. You wanted me to leave you alone and not try to befriend you after you lost your memory. You wanted to be alone. I didn’t much care for the idea. You know the rest. I suppose you were trying to instil a wariness against me if I should happen to turn up.’

‘Then what about Anna Sovanak? Did I know that her body would be left beneath the Weeping Willow?’

‘How could you?’ Stephomi asked, watching me carefully. ‘Indeed, as I understand it, you hardly knew the woman.’

‘Then why-?’

‘Coincidence, Gabriel,’ Stephomi said sharply. ‘You couldn’t have known that her killer would leave her body beneath the monument. I presume your reference to it on the back of the photo was simply because you knew she was Jewish. Take my advice, don’t waste time looking for logic in what you have done.’ He gestured at the things spread out on the table before us. ‘You wanted to torment yourself. Nothing more.’

We were silent for a moment. Yes, surely Stephomi was right. I could not possibly have known where Anna Sovanak’s body would appear. It was nothing more than a coincidence.

‘My memory loss was a stupid accident,’ I said at last, ‘How could I possibly have known it was going to happen? How could I possibly have planned for it?’

Stephomi shrugged. ‘I don’t know, Gabriel. When I questioned you about it before, you told me to back off. You said you knew what you were doing.’

‘Was I losing my mind?’ I almost whispered. ‘Was I different before? Was I this strange, twisted person?’

This was something that had been bothering me for a while. Was I really me? Or had my amnesia caused the reset button to be pushed so that I was just this blank slate once again? Starting from scratch.. having to rebuild my personality again through my experiences… my environment…

‘No, you were much the same before,’ Stephomi replied. ‘But…’

‘But what?’ I asked, latching on to his hesitation immediately.

Stephomi sighed. ‘Well, Nicky phoned me about a week before she died. She was… she said she was worried about you. She wanted to see me but I was in Japan at the time and couldn’t get back.’

‘Why was she worried?’

‘She wouldn’t tell me on the phone. I would’ve been in England within the next couple of weeks and I was going to go see her then.’ He shrugged. ‘To be honest, I expect it was just that you told her you could see devils and it freaked her out.’

‘You mean she didn’t already know?’ I asked.

‘No. It’s not an easy thing to tell someone. But whatever your state of mind beforehand, you certainly weren’t at all balanced after they died. So don’t try to make sense of what you did. You won’t find any. You wouldn’t listen to reason and you wouldn’t listen to me. To be honest, I really don’t know the true extent of what you did and why.’

He sounded tired and I realised when I looked at him that there were bags of weariness beneath his eyes that he had not been able to disguise. When I asked him about it, he replied with an uncharacteristic impatience. ‘It’s starting, Gabriel. It’s all about to begin. Can’t you feel it? As a person of the In Between, I’m surprised you can’t sense it. Have you not been having dreams? Mirror visions? Things like that?’

‘I’ve had those from the beginning,’ I replied, thinking of the recent appearance of Lilith in my dreams but not wanting to discuss it with my inclined-to-mockery friend.

‘It’s building like static,’ he went on. ‘It’s been itching away at me, like nails on a blackboard, keeping me awake and filling my mind with… disturbing images that I can’t block out.’

I gazed at him in the dim snugness of the ancient cellar and knew that he was right. Perhaps it was my imagination, but even as we sat there I thought I felt power-surged currents brushing the hairs of my arms as they swept by. Rubbing my arm absently, I asked, ‘What do you think will happen? Is there anything we can do that will make any kind of difference at all?’

I had expected Stephomi to give his usual brusque answer that, of course, as mere humans, there was nothing we could do to influence the centuries-old War that had for so long been raging between Satan’s angels and God’s. But for some time, Stephomi simply gazed thoughtfully at me, tapping the tips of his slender fingers on the edge of the wood-polished table.

‘Shall we go for a walk?’ Stephomi asked at last, standing up abruptly.

‘I… what? Where?’

‘Anywhere.’

‘But… it’s below freezing outside!’

‘I need some fresh air,’ Stephomi said. ‘And I’d rather not have this conversation inside. There aren’t so many people outside on a day like this.’

Feeling perplexed, I got up and followed Stephomi from the hotel and out into the savagely cold air. I was glad of the ankle-length black coat I had brought with me, and did the buttons up all the way to my neck. Still the cold chafed my fingers and face. How strange to think that warm autumn had been so short a time ago. The sudden descent into winter seemed unnaturally fast.

‘It’s colder than it should be for this time of year,’ Stephomi remarked as we walked. ‘Have you noticed?’

I nodded wordlessly. It was a strange kind of chill that seemed to settle over the city at night and couldn’t be shaken off during the day. Several castle spires were visible as we walked further, the striking outline of the Hilton at our back. Our feet crunched on the frozen gravel path we were walking down. I noticed as we went on that the pressure of my weight was actually snapping the frozen pebbles in two, like brittle lengths of glass. The coating of frost over the buildings and the cobbled roads was only paper-thin, and yet still it had not melted in the slightly brighter warmth of day. And although there was neither rain nor snow on the ground itself, the air seemed thick with a kind of softened ice that blew into our faces and wetted our clothes.

‘Feels like the air itself is freezing, doesn’t it?’ Stephomi said, echoing my own thoughts.

We soon reached the Fisherman’s Bastion. It’s so beautiful that if I lived closer I would go there every single night before returning to my apartment. It’s basically something between a castle and a city wall, sprawling along the top of the hill overlooking the Danube, with great glassless windows and hollow towers you can climb into, each having open arched doors and the same windows carved into the rock. There are covered walkways with cobbled paths, and curved, sweeping wide staircases with white knights set into the walls and stone lions perched on top of pillars. It would have looked beautiful at any time of year, but when it’s sparkling with glass beads of frost that cling to every spire and turret; every frozen knight and lion coated in pale blue ice, it is even more breathtaking and I really could sit there for hours. I love this city; I truly think it must be the most beautiful in the whole world, and I’m so thankful that I live here. If I had to live anywhere other than Budapest, I know I would be miserable.

We stopped in one of the covered towers and stood at an arched window overlooking the icy Danube. The view before us was incredible. Spires and towers rose up from the smaller buildings, and the whole city glittered in its winter coat of frost, like a vast enchanted ice palace straight from the pages of a fairytale. The Hungarians seem to revel in their adeptness at capturing elusive Beauty in their churches, their monuments, and the angel-graced bridges that arch gracefully over the Danube.

‘We have a little problem,’ Stephomi said softly.

I glanced at him, eyebrow raised. ‘Little problem as in “ The Antichrist is coming ” or little problem as in you can’t find your house keys?’

‘The first one, I’m afraid. I, er… had assumed that all this fuss about the Antichrist was because he would soon be coming into a position of power where he would be able to do real damage… You know, start wreaking havoc and so on. But… apparently the dates Nostradamus refers to aren’t to do with anything the Antichrist himself does as such.’

‘Get to the point,’ I said, aware that he was stalling.

‘You won’t like it,’ Stephomi sighed. ‘The dates refer to his birth. And Raphael told me last night that you know the mother.’

The vivid image of the conflicting aura surrounding Casey flew to the forefront of my mind at once. The aura that could at one moment be coloured in the most visually stunning shades of sparkling gold, and the next dripping with a wickedness so vile that all the senses screamed at the sight of it. It should have occurred to me before. I should have known. In all honesty, perhaps I did.

‘So who is she?’ Stephomi persisted.

‘Casey March,’ I said. ‘She’s my neighbour. I’ve been trying to help her. She’s just a teenager and she hasn’t got anyone. She says it’s a virgin pregnancy.’

‘Well, that’s another point in favour of it being Jesus number two, I guess,’ Stephomi said with a shrug. ‘Poor little brat. He can be a Hitler or a Schindler but nothing in between.’

‘Well, then, extra care must simply be taken with the raising of the child,’ I said firmly.

Stephomi remained silent for a moment, gazing at the city before us, an expression of doubt on his face. ‘Ah, well, that’s the problematic thing, isn’t it? People disagree about raising children as it is. Who’s best fit to decide?’

‘The mother, of course! It’s Casey’s baby, isn’t it? She loves it already!’

‘Yes, and I understand Clara Hitler was quite fond of her own little dictator,’ Stephomi said impatiently. ‘Come on, what has love got to do with it, Gabriel? If only she’d been one of those mothers who had starved and beaten her child. So many deaths might have been averted — ’

‘I’ll help Casey,’ I said, interrupting him.

‘Oh, you will, will you?’

‘Yes,’ I said, nodding. ‘I will.’

Stephomi glanced at me then, a wry smile twisting his lips. ‘How nice to know that there is a hero here among us! I’m sure my dreams will no longer be plagued by visions of the Apocalypse now that I know you have put your name down for nappy-changing duty, Gabriel.’

I frowned, irritated by his sarcasm. ‘You don’t understand. I’m going to save Casey. That’s what God wants me to do. That’s why I’m here.’

Stephomi nodded wisely. ‘So… how do you know the big guy so well?’

‘Big guy?’ I said, trying to remember any fat men with whom I might be acquainted.

‘The big man upstairs,’ Stephomi clarified. ‘God, Allah, Ganesh, Buddha… whatever you want to call him.’

‘Buddhists don’t believe that Buddha is a god,’ I said impatiently. ‘And those other so-called “Gods” you mentioned are false ones.’

‘Christ, why do you have to turn every question into a theological debate? I’ll rephrase it for you, Gabriel: how can you be so sure about what it is God wants you to do?’

‘I just know, that’s all. Don’t you understand? It’s like one of those comic books. I’m like one of those superheroes. I don’t care about myself, I just want to help other people.’

‘Superhero, eh?’ Stephomi said, looking me up and down. ‘Yes, I can certainly see the similarities. I’d stay clear of the spandex costumes, though, if I were you. I don’t think any man has ever looked good in spandex.’

‘Oh, shut up about the fucking spandex!’ I snapped, losing my temper. ‘The spandex is irrelevant. The costume is irrelevant. Why do you have to turn everything into a fucking joke?’

‘Sorry, Gabriel, it’s a bad habit, I know. I just don’t want you to forget while you’re making these plans that you’re not the only player in the game. The angels and demons might have plans of their own for the baby.’

‘What the hell is that supposed to mean, Stephomi?’

Stephomi glanced at me, eyebrow raised. ‘Don’t worry. Budapest isn’t about to be overrun by choirs of angels and hordes of demons. God and Lucifer frown on it.’

‘Frown on it?’ I repeated incredulously.

‘Yes. Earth is a playing board for humans. Angels and demons can involve themselves in the game to a point. But the major moves must all be made by human players. Of course,’ he added with a shrug, ‘that doesn’t mean that angels and their fallen brothers can’t employ human agents. But there are so few people of the In Between in existence today anyway, and I believe you and I are the only ones here in Budapest.’

I glanced sharply at him and he returned my look with a slightly bitter smile. ‘Don’t look at me like that, Gabriel. I have no intention of taking the child from its mother. Children were never really my thing, you know. All that screaming.’

‘They don’t scream that often,’ I said.

‘No, I meant me. If I’m around them too long.’

I sighed and ran a hand through my hair. ‘Am I the only one who feels like they’re caught in a giant, invisible spider’s web?’

‘You mean God’s web, don’t you?’ Stephomi said.

‘It’s a devil’s web,’ I said sharply.

‘Well, it’s a web that reaches down from the lowest layer of Heaven to the uppermost level of Hell, with Earth trapped in the middle. If God finds the situation so distasteful, one might wonder why He does not trouble to brush the web from Heaven’s edge so that it might sink harmlessly down upon itself. Perhaps the Good Lord rather enjoys watching the insects that get caught in it, thrashing about, unable to free themselves. Entertainment is scarce when you’re in Heaven, you know.’

‘You must not doubt God,’ I said, just about managing to control myself at his blasphemous words. ‘You must have faith.’

‘Where does your faith come from anyway?’ Stephomi asked, glancing at me, a strange curiosity in his eyes. ‘How can you believe in Heaven? I don’t think I could take fat, naked cherubs plucking harps at me for any great length of time.’

I hesitated, trying to think of some way to explain, but I had no answer for him. You can’t rationalise faith.

‘Well, I’d better be getting back,’ Stephomi said, glancing at his watch. ‘You’d do well to keep an eye on this girl of yours, Gabriel. If nothing more, at least we’ve got a few more years than we thought while this kid is growing up before God comes down and starts dishing out justice like there’s no tomorrow.’

It had become dark while we’d been standing there. The Chain Link Bridge was now lit up and I could see the outlines of the floodlit Basilica and Parliament buildings across the dark Danube. The old-fashioned lanterns had come on, lighting the sprawling fairytale white spires of the Fisherman’s Bastion with a soft golden glow. It was so magical that I half expected to see a unicorn walking through the frosted arches, or snow faeries fluttering about the tall, glowing streetlamps as I made my way back towards the glittering Chain Link Bridge.

When I got back to my building late that night, I took the elevator up to my floor and walked along the corridor to my apartment, where I froze in sudden fear. The walls of the building were thin and poorly soundproofed, and I could clearly hear sobbing coming from Casey’s apartment. Dread flooded through me as I thought of all Stephomi had said that afternoon as we overlooked the frostbitten Danube — things of an unborn child and the intense interest that angels and demons alike had in it… Don’t forget you are not the only player in the game…

I knocked sharply on the door. When there was no answer, I called Casey’s name. To my relief, she opened the door then, looking at me with red-rimmed eyes, clutching a grotty bit of tissue and sniffing pathetically.

‘What is it?’ I asked anxiously. ‘What happened?’

‘When I… when I got back in today… the social services and the police were waiting. They found me when I tried to use my credit cards… They’ve taken Toby back to my parents.’

And then she burst into tears. I felt for her, even as relief swept through me. It had been bound to happen sooner or later. Casey herself had admitted that she couldn’t look after her brother. I held on to her tightly while she sobbed against me, feeling painfully sorry for her as well as exasperated by my own helplessness to fix this for her.

‘I was going to t-take him back anyway,’ she gulped between sobs. ‘But I was going to wait until… wait until after Ch-Christmas. I’ve never been on my own at Christmas before. I just w-wanted someone from my fam-family…’

I hated Casey’s parents in that moment. Hated them. If I had been lucky enough to keep my family, I know I would never intentionally have hurt them or lied to them or betrayed their trust or made them feel worthless and unwanted. I think husbands who cheat on their wives are disgusting. And I think parents who throw out their children over pregnancies or sexuality or any other pathetic reason are a disgrace. They don’t know how lucky they are to have each other to begin with.

‘You won’t be alone for Christmas,’ I said softly. ‘I know I’m no substitute for your family, but at least you won’t be on your own. And soon you’ll have a tiny perfect baby that belongs only to you that no one will be able to take away.’

30th November

Last night I dreamed I was back home with Nicky and Luke. I was in the bathroom of this beautiful old Victorian house, giving my son a bath before bed. He was splashing around with toy submarines, getting soapy water everywhere, and I knew Nicky would tell us off for making such a mess when she got upstairs.

Luke’s pyjamas were on the side by the sink but I couldn’t find his towel anywhere. I stuck my head out of the door and shouted down the darkened corridor, ‘Nick, where’s Luke’s towel?’

But there was no answer — the large old house was silent. I turned back into the bathroom, frowning, and glanced at the white, fluffy ‘His and Hers’ towels warming on the towel rail. I grabbed my own and dried my son off with it, made rather a mess with talcum powder, and then managed to get him into his pyjamas.

I picked him up and walked down the corridor with him to his bedroom. There were soft toys on the shelves lining the room and trains on the wallpaper. I tucked Luke up in bed, brushed back strands of his dark blond hair, said goodnight to him, then turned the nightlight on and crept out of his room… But no sooner had I shut the door than I froze at the sound of glass breaking downstairs somewhere. It was probably just Nicky dropping a wine glass while cleaning up our dinner, but… something made the hairs on my arms stand up with this awful apprehension that prevented me from calling out to my wife and made me fetch the baseball bat from our bedroom before creeping down the stairs.

The house was dimly lit with only a couple of lamps still on, but I knew the house — it seemed very familiar even in my dream — and I had no trouble navigating the stairs in the half light. When I got to the bottom of the stairs I froze, cold dread making my heart beat painfully fast as I clearly saw the dark silhouette of a man standing in the next room. It was the living room and there was no light save for the moonlight shining through the French doors.

‘Who are you?’ I demanded, straining my eyes towards him, gripping my baseball bat harder. ‘How did you get in here?’

Still he didn’t speak, didn’t even move. I approached slowly, aware that he was probably dangerous, that he might even be armed. I got to the doorway of the living room and then reached in and flicked on one of the spot lamps. The light shone directly onto Nicky’s priceless baby grand piano in the corner, only softly illuminating the rest of the room — the bookcases, the beige suite, the box of Luke’s toys neatly packed away. And the man stood in the centre of the room, staring at me.

He was tall, with dark hair combed back, black boots, navy trousers and jacket, white cravat and pale, waxy skin. But what alarmed me the most was that he held a long, thin sword awkwardly in his hand. And there was blood on its blade.

‘Where is my wife?’ I asked, my voice shaking slightly already.

The intruder looked at me and I saw that there were dark bags of fatigue beneath his eyes. ‘Don’t you recognise me?’ he asked hoarsely.

‘No,’ I said, staring at him. ‘Who are you?’

‘I’m Valentine.’

‘Valentine?’

‘Gretchen’s brother.’

‘Gretchen? You mean the woman who was Faust’s lover?’

‘Mephistopheles is killing us,’ he groaned, dropping the sword so it clattered loudly on the parquet wooden flooring. ‘Once we’re dead, he’ll turn on you.’

‘Where is my wife?’ I demanded once again.

‘She’s upstairs. In the bathroom.’

‘Look, why the hell are you in my house?’ I said. There was something about his motionless posture, about his sunken eyes, that was making me feel increasingly alarmed. ‘What’s the matter with you?’

‘I’m bleeding to death,’ Valentine replied softly. ‘That’s what’s the matter with me.’

And as I stared in horror, Valentine moved his jacket aside with one hand so that I could see the dagger buried in his chest and the blood soaking into his white shirt, running down the side of his leg to stain the parquet floor beneath his feet. With a yell, I dropped the baseball bat and raced upstairs to find Nicky, quite sure, even before I found her, that something really awful had already happened. When I burst into the bathroom, Nicky was already dead and our ‘His and Hers’ towels were dripping with blood. I couldn’t scream, I couldn’t even move — I just stood there, staring at the bloody towels, and when someone started to play the piano downstairs I somehow knew that it was Mephistopheles on my wife’s piano, waiting for me to go down and face him.

It’s lucky I know that my family died in a car crash or else this dream would really have upset me. As it was, it did, of course, scare me. But nightmares are only nightmares and I’m not going to make my usual mistake of attaching far too much importance to things that have no meaning.