army boots, a long-fringed jacket sewn from pieces of recycled leather in

various shades of black and brown, and patched military fatigue trousers,

crudely altered to fit his considerably less than military size. He

habitually

wore thin, black, studded leather gloves with the fingers cut off, and

beneath

his jacket his thin black tunic was soiled and torn.

He had run off from one foster home after another until he was finally placed

in

a community school, a polite British euphemism for reformatory, but he had

run

off from mere as well, and for the past several years he'd been living on the

streets of Whitechapel. He was thirteen years old. And he was hearing voices.

Actually it was one voice in particular. He knew it wasn't his, because his

own

voice hadn't changed yet. The thought occurred to him that perhaps he was

possessed. He thought he'd rather be possessed than crazy, because at least

possession was something that came in from the outside and maybe you could

fight

it. Crazy was the mind coming apart from the inside, and he didn't see what

the

hell he could do about that. So, with a certain draconian logic, Billy was

hoping that his problem was a demon.

The first time it happened, he was looking in a mirror, brushing out his

"do,"

and suddenly his eyes went very wide and a strange, deep, cultured-sounding

voice came out of him and said, "Oh, my God!"

For a moment Billy wasn't sure where the voice had come from, and he turned

around quickly, thinking someone was behind him, but there wasn't anybody

there.

A second later the voice was there again.

"No, back here, you guttersnipe! Look in the mirror!"

He turned back and looked into the mirror and realized ' with a shock that he

had said that. He saw his own lips moving, as if of their own volition.

"Oh, no!" said the strange voice. "This can't possibly be happening! I won't

allow it! I won't stand for it!"

Billy squinted at his own reflection in the mirror. "'Ere!" he said

belligerently. "Who in bloody 'ell you talkin' to?"

Then he blinked twice, shook his head as if to clear it, and stared back

uncertainly at his reflection in the mirror. "You're talkin' to yourself,

Slade,

you bleedin' twit. Come on, pull yourself together! Stop it!"

And then a deep groan suddenly escaped him. "Ohhhh, God! First that

miserable,

squirrel-infested oak tree, and now this!"

'"Ey!" Billy said, frowning angrily at his reflection in the mirror. "Who the

bleedin' 'ell's in there?"

There was no response.