Weeping Angels - Transform people

‘Lady, dame, girl, make your mind up.’ All right, so my mind was on working out the plot rather than witty dialogue right now. ‘You have a way of making someone look how you want – am I right?’

‘Top of the class, doll.’

‘You asked about my height and weight, so I’m guessing it’s to do with moving bits round rather than hacking them about.’ I had a vague idea of how it might work, but he’d need the sort of power supply that wasn’t readily available in 1930s New York.

‘That’s right.’ Kliener took his cigar out of his mouth for long enough to examine it and seem surprised it wasn’t lit. ‘It’s all to do with redistribution of flesh and bone matter.’ He knocked on the nearest bell jar and it made a dull ringing sound. ‘These are all different people. But now, thanks to my work, they look the same.’

‘But they’re asleep,’ I pointed out. ‘They’re even more bored with what you’ve done than I am.’

He chomped his cigar. ‘Funny girl. They’re just waiting till I need them. As you know I got a costume store, and a prop store and a scenery store. Now I got a star store too.’

I peered through the glass at a sleeping Giddy Semestre. She looked just like the real thing. Though, I realised, I’d probably never met the real thing. I wondered who she used to be.

‘What happens to them?’ I was asking myself as much as Kliener. My breath misted the glass as I spoke, blurring the woman’s sleeping features.

‘They die.’ He said it easily, like it was no big deal. Like it wasn’t the most important event in his star’s short life. ‘The process doesn’t last. A couple of weeks, then they pay the price for being beautiful. I guess you burn too bright you don’t burn for long.’

‘They get old,’ I realised. I remembered the old tramp outside Nick’s when I was on my way to the launch party. That had been the Rock Railton I met the day before – the one I had promised to help. Too late for him now.

‘They just sort of crumble away,’ Kliener said. ‘Sad. But, hey, that’s life. Or rather…’ He paused to guffaw unpleasantly. It was the sort of sound a donkey might make if it was in intense pain and beyond embarrassment. ‘Or rather – that’s death.’

I didn’t share his amusement. ‘So they die, and you just wheel out a new version. An identical copy.’

‘You got it. Have to animate them first – wake them up. Then the clock starts ticking. Two weeks they got, if they’re lucky. That’s why I keep a few spares. I find a suitable candidate, and I process them ready for when I need them. A word to the press that they’ve set their sights on Hollywood and no one’s the wiser.’

‘But what,’ I asked as sweetly as I could stomach, ‘if they don’t want to cooperate? It might be news to you, but not everyone in this world wants to be a famous movie star.’

‘That’s no problem. They forget. They forget everything when they wake up. They think they really are Rock Railton or Giddy Semestre.’

‘Or Hank?’

Kliener’s eyes narrowed and his cigar drooped slightly. ‘Or Hank,’ he agreed.

‘You have a template,’ I guessed. ‘They only have the memories the real person had at the point that was made. Which is why a new Rock Railton doesn’t know what the last one got up to or who he met. Same with Giddy Semestre. Same with Hank.’

His eyes had narrowed so far now that they were in danger of disappearing altogether. He knew it was coming, so before he could work out what to do about it, I turned to face the two Hanks with guns.

‘So how long have these guys got?’ I asked. ‘Before they “just sort of crumble away”?’

Neither Hank showed any sign of understanding the point I was trying to make. Kliener had obviously chosen their template for physical rather than mental acuity. I glanced back at the third Hank who was making some adjustments to the coffin-tank. I doubted he knew what ‘acuity’ meant either.

Beyond him, a fourth Hank had appeared in the doorway. He was escorting the severe-looking middle-aged make-up woman I’d seen in the studio. From her expression I reckoned I’d rather let Lizzie Borden work on my looks than this hatchet-faced harridan.

Between them, the new Hank and hatchet-face were supporting another woman. It took me a moment to recognise Giddy Semestre. As they approached, I heard Kliener gasp beside me. It wasn’t hard to tell why.

Giddy’s face was drawn and her hair was turning grey. Her forehead was lined, and crow’s feet framed her eyes. She looked like she had aged twenty years since I last saw her about an hour earlier.

‘Already?’ Kliener said.

‘It’s getting quicker,’ Harridan-Woman said. ‘We need another one quick – they’re still shooting.’

Giddy looked up at me, confused and afraid. Maybe she recognised me as the one person here who might have some sympathy. Well, she was right there.

‘What’s happening to me?’ she asked in a throaty rasp. Her face looked even more wrinkled than it had just moments before.

‘Nothing to worry about, doll,’ Kliener said. ‘The show must go on.’

And with that he stepped forward, drew a pistol from inside his jacket pocket, and shot her clean through the head.

I say ‘clean’. In fact, it was anything but. It would take Make-Up Lady a few minutes to sort out herself and Fourth-Hank.

The bloodstains also spattered the curtain that partitioned off a small area off to the side of the equipment attached to the coffin-tank. I’d noted the cables and wires snaking underneath the curtain earlier. Well hey – I’m a detective. I notice things. And the thing I noticed now was that the curtain shimmered, as if in a breeze. From behind it came a noise that was partway between a sigh and a sharp intake of breath.

If Kliener noticed, he didn’t show it. ‘Less than two days this time.’ He sounded worried – and it wasn’t the sort of concern one might naturally expect to feel after shooting dead one of the world’s most famous women.

***

The Angel's Kiss, Chapter 6

***

I GOT AMPLE confirmation of Kliener’s complete indifference to irony: when I mentioned the Angel, he looked up at me sharply – and blinked. Then, in case I hadn’t found that amusing and ironic enough, he did it some more. There was a nervous tick at the side of his eye too. I suspected he wasn’t especially delighted at the way I’d stolen his thunder. I was unrepentant – I think he’d stolen more than that in his time.

And thinking of time brought me back to the Angel, which I now knew from his reaction Kliener had hidden behind the curtain. Where no one could see it. God knows what it was doing – out of sight but not out of mind.

‘Where’s this going to end?’ I demanded while Kliener was failing to come up with a response. ‘Can’t you see what’s happening? The process is speeding up. It’s taking more energy as it gets stronger. And the stronger the Angel gets the more energy it takes which accelerates things still further. How long before she’s strong enough to escape?’

‘You know nothing,’ Kliener spat. And I use the word accurately.

‘I know more than you,’ I told him as I dabbed at my face with a hanky. However apparently tight and uncompromising one’s outfit always make sure you have a special handy space for a hanky. And lipstick.

‘So what if you do?’

‘Well, if I know more than you and I know nothing, then I suppose you know less than nothing. Is that right?’

He didn’t seem very interested in the mathematics of it. Instead he wobbled over to the curtain and yanked it aside.

I think even Kliener was surprised by what he revealed. The Angel was leaning forward, its chipped wings swept back as if it was moving at incredible speed. Its gnarled, clawed hands stretched out in front like the talons of an eagle reaching for its prey. The stone face was weathered and lined, but twisted into a hideous snarl of anger, rage, and hunger.

‘I am guessing,’ I said in my best told-you-so voice, ‘that it’s repairing itself. That’s what it does with all the energy – the potential life it rips away from your victims. And I do mean victims.’

‘Not another word out of you, Miss Blabbermouth,’ Kliener snapped.

I ignored this skilful quip. ‘It uses a fraction of that energy to shape the next Rock Railton or Giddy Semestre or Hank…’ I paused, momentarily thrown. ‘What’s your last name?’ I asked the nearest Hank.

‘Sissy,’ he said.

‘It was a fair question.’

‘Hank Sissy,’ the other gun-toting Hank said.

‘Seriously?’

‘No – Sissy.’

Time to move on. ‘Rock Railton, Giddy Semestre or Hank Sissy – it uses a fraction of the energy used to remould your victims to take on the memories and appearance of their templates. The rest of the life force it keeps, the rest of the unholy bargain it does with Time, goes to repairing itself. As you can see.’

Well, Kliener was looking, but he probably couldn’t see the truth. He didn’t want to. He had other things on his mind. In any case it was clear that Max Kliener and the truth had a rather arm’s length relationship.

I tried a different tack. ‘So how does the Angel wake your sleeping beauties?’

His smile was back, curled round his cigar. ‘How else? With a kiss.’

‘The kiss of an Angel?’

‘The merest touch will do it. But let’s call it a kiss. That seems appropriate.’

It would certainly work, and it did seem horribly appropriate.

***

The Angel's Kiss: A Melody Malone Mystery, Chapter 7