Poor Goliath’s eyes are watering with laughter and I give him a cuddle. He is a big soft bear. He is my big soft bear.
Nightingale eyeballs a young boy near the edge of the stage. “You, young lad. Sometimes you hear bad noises at night. Say your prayers and be good. For you are hearing the ghosts of your grandparents wander about.”
The young boy scratches his head. “Me granny is still alive sir.”
“Yes, I’m still alive!” an elderly voice cries from the audience.
Nightingale moves backwards and moves a leaver attached to the side curtain, a puff of smoke and several black ravens fly out of the side. “They are the messengers of the other worlds.” One flies onto the ceiling beam and craps into the audience. The audience claps.
Nightingale speaks, his voice excited. “Tonight there is a young lady in the audience who needs my assistance. She has a demon within her and I am going to exorcise it from her.”
The audience looks curiously about the room. Mr Nightingale points in my direction. “Young lady, please come onto the stage.”
I stand up and walk through the audience onto the stage, looking back and catching a glimpse of Goliath. He is anxious. Mr Nightingale stands next to me and I examine his sequinned silver moon cloak. A thousand tiny fingers have embroidered that cloak. The fingers of a fairy seamstress, such minute needlework. It is quite magnificent close up, and shifts like black liquid, dribbling elegantly like ink over the stage.
“This young girl,” Mr Nightingale continues, “came to me for help. A dark spirit resides inside her. It speaks to her. Tonight on this very stage with the assistance of the spirit world I will draw that demon out and free her.”
The audience claps, transfixed by the charlatan.
“Right, little miss.” He waggles a bony white finger under my nose. “Stand very still.” He positions me in the centre of the stage like a statue, whilst the wooden floorboards creak theatrically under his footsteps. He waggles his finger again, this time somewhat violently.
“I command you, spirit of the underworld, leave this girl’s body.”
The audience mutter and shift in their seats. I gaze out at them. A sea wave of faces mesmerized with Mr Nightingale, eyeballs popping like boiled eggs. Goliath, huge, standing at the back and watching me, rather concerned. I can see Mr Nightingale fumbling pathetically with his cloak, whilst mumbling some nonsense incantation. My eyes drift lazily to the side of the stage where the dead wait, quiet as church mice. They all start to smile at me. It is the wrong sort of smile. The dead are like photographs hanging on the wall. I wonder why they are here. What do they want? I want to send them back to the land of the dead. I think about fire, flames as red as dragon scales to make them disappear. I imagine the audience turned to charcoal matchstick men.
Mr Nightingale continues. “Hear me, foul spirit,” and at this he rests his hand on my head. “Leave her and return to the foul pit from whence thy came.”
The floorboards squeak under his feet. The dead are chuckling to themselves, whispering. One of those ghosts says, “I’m embarrassed for him. Some sort of brain damage,” and he taps the side of his head.
I think about the Egyptian princess and her flowers of flames. I imagine her lying in her tomb, love charms placed at her feet, the hearts of birds put in little pots for her. All those hearts for her. And then I hear the screaming.
The curtain behind us is on fire, flames dancing up the walls. Mr Nightingale shrieks like a child. “How? How has this happened?”
I have no answer for him.
Goliath thunders down the aisle, throwing spectators aside. His great paws lift me up and carry me through the audience to safety outside. I see the ravens fly out of the church doors, followed by great lumps of people panicking and screaming onto the street. I can see Mr Nightingale putting out his beautiful cloak, which is flickering with flames, with a dirty puddle. A raven cackling at him, amused, from a nearby rooftop.
As Goliath carries me through the streets I keep thinking about Egypt and the orange moon at nights. I can hear Goliath’s heart beating like a great clock. His father had a voice as rich as butter and was as big and dark-skinned as Goliath. I remember his hands, which were covered in ink stains from his writings on the tomb of the princess, his obsession. I remember the long conversations they had together, while drinking black coffee that smelt of syrup and the honey cakes we all ate, sweet and delicious. They would talk about the symbols painted on her tomb – the dung beetles, the magic eye for protection, the birds with rainbow wings – while the lemony sunlight drizzled over them. Those colours of Egypt were so deep and startling it was as if they had painted over me like oil on a canvas. Smeared into my veins.
Tonight, Goliath brings up mugs of hot chocolate and sits in a great armchair, cuddling me.