Free Crashing Heaven by Al Robertson Page B

was on stage. She materialised unannounced. There was a small stir in the bar, quiet sounds of movement as a few people turned in their chairs. The spotlight caught her. She’d wrapped a wide, dark scarf around her head to make a hood. Her face was invisible. Jack sat back into the shadows, his heart shocked by memory.
    [Aw!] moaned Fist. [She’s covered up. I was looking forward to a bit of skull!]
    Andrea wore a tight-fitting dress studded with sequins. She swayed to a recorded backing track, making each one sparkle with unreachable fire. Bleak jazz notes scattered into the air. A saxophone riff drifted by like a kiss. It was the intro to one of her own songs. She leant in towards the microphone. There was the lightest sigh, lost in reverb. And then she started to sing.
    [ These people,] breathed Jack, [they don’t deserve her.]
    Amplified words drifted through the bar like smoke. They barely touched most of its patrons. Some continued conversations, others flirtations. Others just drank alone, lost in slowly emptying glasses. The blonde woman was leaning against a pillar, distractedly stirring at a cocktail with a bright little paper umbrella. It flashed against her dark clothes. She looked bored.
    Jack was the only one to stare at the stage, rapt as Andrea’s singing prowled around him. He lifted his glass and swigged. The harsh taste burnt his throat, pulling him back to the past. In the few short months he’d been with Andrea, he’d sat drinking cheap Docklands whisky in so many clubs like this.
    He’d always taken a seat at the back, always entered and left without acknowledging her. They’d put so much care into keeping their relationship secret. Harry had eyes everywhere. Later in the evening, they’d meet somewhere hidden – a cheap hotel or a private dining room – and talk through the evening’s gig, then the day or days since they’d seen each other last. Again and again, Jack found himself grasping for words, never quite able to express how Andrea’s songs moved him. He stopped listening to his store of Homelands sounds. They seemed so insipid when they had to follow the deft, committed power of her live performances.
    Jack let an ice cube roll out of the glass and across his tongue, chilling his mouth. The cold pulled him out of his reverie. As he did so, he noticed the faintest light in the air just beside him, shivering around an empty seat. [ By the pricking of my thumbs …] said Fist, giggling nervously.
    Jack looked back to the stage, assuming that the light was an effect of the stage lights. But they had dimmed and now glowed too softly in the darkness to reach him. He glanced back at the seat. The light still hung there, faintly suggesting a human form. Jack wondered if there was a glitch in the weave. Even if there was, he shouldn’t be able to pick it up. There was a hint of a sound in the air, something that could have been a word, maybe a greeting. Fist tittered nervously, a sharp contrast with the slow, mournful blues that Andrea was whispering out from the stage. It was suddenly cold. A waitress came by, collecting empty glasses. Jack wondered if she’d respond to the shimmer, but it seemed that she could not see it.
    He looked back towards the anomaly. The light was shifting towards him, as if something were leaning in to speak to him. There was the slightest breath, echoing the gentleness of Andrea’s singing. It seemed to be whispering, but he could not make out any words. Then the shape collapsed. A thousand tiny shards of light flashed softly against him. They pooled on the table, in his lap, on the floor, before slowly fading out. It was as if a ghost had kissed him. He wondered if it could have been some new form of fetch. But the dead could not manifest unsummoned and he had no way of invoking anyone from the Coffin Drives.
    [Did you see that?] he asked.
    There was a pause.
    [ I saw nothing,] spat Fist, drawing himself back into Jack’s mind like a snail coiling up into