Spanky Read online

  Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Information

  Introduction

  Epigraph

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Dedication

  Acknowledgements

  By Christopher Fowler

  About the Author

  Spanky

  Christopher Fowler

  Hydra

  New York

  Spanky is a work of fiction. Names, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  2017 Hydra Ebook Edition

  Copyright © 1994 by Christopher Fowler

  All rights reserved.

  Published in the United States by Hydra, an imprint of Random House, a division of Penguin Random House LLC, New York.

  Hydra is a registered trademark and the Hydra colophon is a trademark of Penguin Random House LLC.

  Originally published in the United Kingdom in a print edition by Warner Books, London, in 1994 and in a digital edition by Transworld Digital, a division of Penguin Random House UK, London, in 2016.

  Ebook ISBN 9780399180439

  Cover art: Martin Butterworth

  randomhousebooks.com

  Introduction

  So there I am, standing in the shop window of a bookshop in Bluewater shopping mall, of all places, next to a gigantic man dressed in leather stockings, a thong and wings. It’s my own fault. I had wanted to write a novel that updated the Faust legend. I thought, if Goethe’s student was around now he’d probably ask for tons of really lame stuff, then feel dissatisfied, then discover that everything came with a hidden price, and then he’d have to find within himself the things he needed all along, like truth and morality and kindness. Cool, huh?

  So along comes an alter ego, a sexy, amoral demon who can give the hero, Martyn, everything he wants. But there is a terrible price to pay for success, in this modern moral fable with a dark psychological twist and some pretty good jokes.

  The book got great word-of-mouth. Then an artist friend of mine found the perfect image for the cover—a postcard from a shop in Amsterdam featured the leathery angel-demon Spanky. In real life he was a model, photographed by—wait for it—Fritz Kok, who is a superb fashion photographer.

  The publisher was horrified by the image. We all thought it was hilarious. They put a semi-transparent wrapper around the book to seal its fate by making it really look like porn. The Evening Standard voted it into a special category called ‘Stiffy of the Week’. A campaign was launched to find the model. The whole thing played out like a really perverse version of Cinderella. Eventually I was sent on tour with Spanky, who just made shoppers nervous.

  The film rights were sold to director Guillermo del Toro, who had the idea of relocating the story to Detroit. We sat down together and came up with wild new visuals. Guillermo always kept a notebook with him and filled it with stunning images. Then he was offered Blade 2 and made that instead. But he asked me if he could use the drawings he’d come up with for Spanky, and was so scrupulously fair and kind that I said yes, so when I watch his other films I can still spot bits we’d have had in Spanky.

  It normally doesn’t matter if films don’t get made, but the fact that this one didn’t affected my life adversely. Everything had been ready to go, and suddenly I was in limbo, without another book deal. I love Guillermo, but Pacific Rim, really? Of course, that was accessible to everyone, and Spanky, sinister, dark and rude, really wasn’t.

  I carried the main character around in my head and eventually wrote a sequel in the form of the short story ‘Spanky’s Back in Town’, which appeared in the collection Personal Demons, now available as an ebook.

  With Spanky, I learned that bad-boy characters gave me license to have fun, even if the book’s success entailed trudging around Britain’s shopping centres for my signing sessions with the complaining cover model in tow. There was a problem, though. Fight Club came out and hinged on virtually the same idea, so now no filmmaker would touch it with a barge pole.

  But here’s the thing: if Spanky had become a film, the Bryant & May novels would never have been written, because my career would have taken a different path. Maybe it’s all for the best. I’ll let you decide.

  —Christopher Fowler, 2016

  Hell hath no limits nor is circumscrib’d

  In one self place; but where we are is Hell,

  And where Hell is, there must we ever be.

  —Christopher Marlowe

  Hell is part of the human condition.

  —Kenneth Williams

  Chapter 1

  Retribution

  All this has happened before, and will happen again.

  But this time it happened in London, to the most ordinary of mortals. It happened to a man lost and damned in a tangle of wet North London streets, a man who appeared to be running for his life.

  But I wasn’t running for my life; I was running for someone else’s.

  As I ran, I checked my wristwatch and swore aloud. Ten before midnight. I knew there were only minutes left. I glanced back over my shoulder again. No cabs on the roads, not a bus in sight. No driver would stop for me anyway, not looking like this. Nothing for it but to keep going, and try to catch my breath at the next corner.

  I missed the green pedestrian light. Dropped my hands to my knees and bent forward, gulping air. An overdressed couple emerged from a restaurant arm in arm and stared in careful disgust before skirting around me. The light changed and I ran on, a stitch stinging my side. An empty cab ignored my hoarse shout and veered around my outstretched hand.

  With five and a half minutes to go I was still several streets from the address I had memorized. I knew I was going to be late. But late implied running for a train, late for a blind date, late for a business meeting.

  Not late for a death.

  On past a glaring neon supermarket staffed by sad-looking Asians. An all-night garage, two West Indian girls trying to buy cigarettes, arguing with the Turkish cashier through a scratched Plexiglas window. Walls plastered with band posters and graffiti. A main road ahead; traffic lights about to change against me, amber and green slashing the wet tarmac. I managed a spurt of speed, dashing to the other side, just missed by a newspaper van. Reached the next turning and looked up.

  There in the middle of the road, slowly emerging from a mist of rain, walked a hollow-eyed funeral cortège of thin, bowed figures. I had an impression of top hats and draped bustles, following behind twin horses plumed in black. Snorting and stamping, the Percherons were pulling an ornate ebony coffin wagon, clip-clopping on against the creaking wheels, setting their hooves firmly on cobbles as they rounded the corn
er; an absurdly anachronistic vision.

  That was when I threw my arm across my face and shouted out: ‘There is nothing there, damn you!’ I knew this was a sight no one else could see. When I opened my eyes again, the solemn procession had faded from view. The street was empty.

  I ran on.

  At last I reached the building, a thirties apartment block rising above a darkened delicatessen. Ran up the steps and pushed through the glass doors at the top. The semi-conscious concierge didn’t try to stop me. I shoved my way past him and took the stairs three at a time, hauling myself up by grabbing at the banisters.

  The smell of frying bacon lingered in the stairwell, blending with stale boiled cabbage in the halls. The distant sound of sobbing, misery unfurling behind closed doors.

  The third floor, end of the corridor.

  The overhead lights were out. This was real, not imagined; the ceiling globes had all been smashed. Glass crunched under my track shoes. I slowed to a walk in the thickening darkness, stomach churning, pulse hammering. Already I could see that the jamb of the front door had been shattered. I stood before it, pausing to gather my strength. Then I pushed. The door swung wide at my touch. As I entered, the hallway slowly illuminated itself like a stage set. Another of the bastard’s little tricks, I supposed. I stepped further into the apartment.

  The brass hall-clock read one minute past midnight. For a moment, hope surged. Was I still in time? Then I noticed that it would never read anything else. A crack ran across its face, conveniently fixing the time of death.

  A thin, agonized wail startled me. Could he still be alive? It came from the end of the hall. Beneath the scent of furniture polish, the air held the cuprous tang of fresh blood. I walked forward, checking each of the rooms as I passed. One by one they glowed as bright as theatrical sets and faded as I looked in, just so that I could see everything clearly. Games, even in matters of death, my enemy loved playing games. Now the crying was continuous and low, the sound of a snared animal in constant suffering. I reached the end room and dared myself to look.

  The only signs of disturbance were an overturned chair and a single broken cup and saucer, a little spilled tea. The young man was face down on the floor, crawling toward the fireplace. His face was jaundiced with shock, his pale trousers opaque with urine. Several inches from him, a neat oval of blood was soaking into the carpet. Something was protruding from the small of his back at a sharp angle, the handle of an iron poker. Judging from the length of the exposed section, the other two thirds was lodged inside his body.

  His limbs moved ineffectually, so that he looked like a pinned insect vaguely attempting to free itself. The overhead lights became intense, raised voltage crackling through the filaments.

  I stumbled further into the room, appalled by the pathetic efforts of the dying man. I didn’t know what to do. As I watched, he looked up at me and spoke.

  ‘Why you, of all people?’ he asked, wincing. His teeth squeaked as he ground them together. ‘Martyn, you’re my friend. Why would you want to hurt me?’

  ‘It wasn’t me,’ I replied flatly. ‘I only just got here.’ It sounded absurd. I was standing in a brilliantly lit room, talking to a man with a poker through his gut. It was like being trapped inside someone else’s hallucination.

  ‘I saw you, I know it was you. Don’t come any closer!’

  The fearful figure below me attempted to push away, but the protruding poker handle prevented him from backing against the wall, and then the effort killed him. He said something inaudible, and one eye filled with blood. His shoes drummed against the floor a few times and he was still.

  I had never seen a life leave before, but something left right then. His body, living a moment ago, was already a corpse. In the silence that followed, I gently pulled the door closed, providing a little privacy for death.

  I reached the ground floor and looked out for the concierge, but he wasn’t in his booth. What would I do if he remembered me dashing past? The police would be bound to question him.

  No time to worry about it now. As I left the building it began to rain again, and then to pour. I stood before the little row of shops wrapped in glittering strokes of water as tears poured down my face, and indignation rose within me.

  If I was going to be turned into a murderer, at least Spanky could have told me.

  I looked up into the sky and let the rain splash on my face. That’s when I saw him, looming far above the restaurants and shops and pubs and coffee bars, dressed in his immaculate black tuxedo, literally larger than life. He was chuckling to himself, resting his elbows on the flat terraced rooftops as he looked down at the earth. His giant torso seemed shaped by the clouds, like those old drawings of the North Wind taking human form. He shook his head slowly and tapped his watch, as if to rebuke me for even trying to outrun him.

  I listened to the crackle of rainwater dropping from broken gutters and looked around at the empty streets, praying that someone would turn into the road and look up. But I knew it would be useless. No one else could see him. No one else would ever see him.

  No one but me.

  Chapter 2

  Induction

  All this was before I died in the ambulance, of course. Months ago, in the middle of a terrible, wet August.

  Back then I was doing all the usual things a person does. Working, shopping, sleeping, fucking, reading, watching television. If you’d seen the state of my body when they brought it in, lying there crusted with black rinds of blood, you wouldn’t think it was the same—

  I’m confusing you.

  Listen, this is difficult for me, too. I shouldn’t have started in the middle like that. I did it to get your attention, because somebody has to believe me. I want to explain events as they happened, but I keep rushing ahead.

  Cool down, Martyn.

  Calm and clear.

  Okay.

  My name is Martyn Ross. I’m five feet eleven inches tall, twenty-three years old, and I’ve recently discovered that there are more reasons to be scared than I had ever thought possible.

  Let’s go back.

  The middle of August.

  A Tuesday morning. Traffic sloshing through heavy rain beyond the plate glass. The yellow special-offer banners that had been pasted over the inside windows of the store were sagging with condensation. I was at the rear of the showroom studying the stock book, slowly turning the pages, trying to look busy. As usual, Max came over to see what I was doing. I stared at the catalogue and ignored my boss, wondering if he would ever stop trying to catch me out. The shuffling footsteps ceased and I could see the highly polished toecap of Max’s shoe, the left, from the corner of my eye. One of his legs was a little shorter than the other and he walked with an odd scraping gait, but as he never acknowledged his handicap we all pretended we hadn’t noticed.

  I could feel him glaring at me. I knew that I was expected to account for my time. No problem. I could run rings around Max, whose thoughts were as methodical as his movements.

  ‘Sconces,’ I said, looking up. ‘Faux-Edwardian molded ceramic toothbrush sconces.’

  ‘What about them?’ Max was thrown, but determined to master the conversation.

  ‘Do we have any?’

  ‘Well, I don’t know. What do they look like? What exactly is a sconce?’

  ‘A holder. A bracket. A circle with a stick, like the biological sign for a woman. We’re supposed to have two styles in stock, Mr Deakin, Delaware and Rhapsody, but I can’t find either.’

  ‘If a customer has placed an order for them and they’re not in the stock book, check the computer and see if they’ve been correctly requested from Swindon. Don’t just stand there, Martyn, go and have a look.’

  I slammed the catalogue shut and dropped it on to my desk. The embossed gold logo on the cover was the same as the one emblazoned on the staff pencils, biros and erasers. It graced the front of the store, the pockets of our jackets, and the gaudy ads in the middlebrow colour supplements. Thanet Luxury Furniture it
read, in elaborate gold calligraphy. I found the middle word superfluous and irritating, like an unwarranted nickname. The store was sandwiched between a dry cleaners and an Indian restaurant. On a hot day the mixed fumes of cleaning fluid and curry were strong enough to induce epilepsy.

  I walked off towards the farthest IBM, knowing that Max would not be able to see me through the alcove. I usually passed most of my day this way, shifting from one strategic invisible position to another. The work was mind-numbingly dull but at least it wasn’t disgusting, like being a specialist in diseases of the feet or working down the drains. Even I had to draw the line somewhere. The sofas and coffee tables and bathroom sets we sold were flash-trash, expensive vulgarities for rich people with no taste, so the shop was always busy.

  On Saturdays it was usually packed, which made suitable hiding places even harder to locate. When it was quiet the hours always crawled by on crutches, the afternoons crepusculating as if designed to accompany Chopin’s Funeral March. I hated it here. I hated the giant yellow stickers that read Stylish Bargains, the two words cancelling each other out. I hated the view from the window, a lime-green turf accountant’s and a craft centre filled with misshapen pots and brown rugs. Most of all, I hated myself for not being able to find a better job.

  At 2.45 p.m. I talked a customer out of buying a Devonshire Buffalo-grain leather swivelling armchair. A victory for good taste.

  At 4.15 p.m. weird Lottie came up and stood beside me, coughing cartoonishly into her fist to attract my attention. As always I remained hunched over my paperwork, ignoring her. Finally she squeaked something about going out for coffees and what would I like.

  I told her that I would like a glass of Himalayan yak tea, but I’d resist it on principle until the Chinese got out of Tibet.

  She looked confused. ‘I’ll get you a cappuccino,’ she offered. Lottie was tall and freckled, with straight sandy hair that fell around her thin face like a polished wooden frame. Presumably her height bothered her, because she kept her head low all the time, as if ducking through an arch. She spoke defiantly, with the air of someone defending their reputation. And she had a reputation. Rumours abounded about her and Max, who was separated from his wife.