Yes … I … was … once … real.
Her will called out above the fragmented noise of all the other confused voices. And drove the entity to leave behind the large room and the bloody carnage it had wrought there. To wander through the darkness, the silence of this abandoned city … and find them!
The entity could feel its energy seeping away, and with less energy its form was beginning to shrink. No longer a towering, seething cyclone, it was something smaller, yet still very much substantial. It drifted down an alleyway, finally hesitating at the edge of a large open area.
The voice guiding the collective retrieved fleeting age-old images from a distant past. From the time when she had been a girl.
A girl with ‘friends’. She had been with those ‘friends’; she recalled seeing this open area from some vantage point, from somewhere higher up.
They had emerged from a long, dark space. She remembered that. She dug deep into what was left of her tangled mind. She remembered darkness, and a light at the end. She remembered emerging from the dark and the pleasant sensation of the warmth of sunlight on her face.
A tunnel.
That dark space had been a tunnel. They’d stepped into sunlight and gazed in awe down upon this very place.
The entity drifted across the plaza, towards a low stone wall. It phased from a gliding cloud of energy to something material – a three-legged monstrosity that morphed form as it paced awkwardly, then back to drifting energy again. It began to ascend a narrow stepped walkway, littered with discarded belongings: sandals, necklaces of beads, robes, baskets of clay tablets … the detritus of a panicked departure.
More memories began to form in its consciousness. Nothing more than a confusing slide-show of images that made little sense to her. She saw a giant muscular man. Not human, but more like a simple automaton. She saw a dark home of bricks and crumbling mortar. She saw a young man with a plume of silver hair and a lopsided grin. She saw a menagerie of pitiful human-like creatures dressed in rags of clothing, brutally gunned down by a row of soldiers in crimson tunics. She saw two tall towers in a busy city, gushing plumes of dark smoke into a clear blue sky. She saw the very same city as ash and ruins, and pale creatures with weeping sores on their skin and milk-eyes glaring out at her from darkened spaces. A lifetime lived by someone that used to be her.
The entity drifted to a halt before an archway of darkness, the entrance to a tunnel. And she knew for certain that they, the faces she remembered, the ones she sought, had come this way.
She knew they were waiting for something to appear. Waiting for something to take them home. She recalled that’s how it worked … as friends together, they’d travelled. Different places. Different times. And to do it they’d had to step through a window into Hell.
She couldn’t quite remember why, but it’s what they did.
Then her phasing memory finally reminded her why. Finally made sense of things.
They travelled through time … seeking the girl I once was … to find her. And kill her.
The entity’s fading energy crackled and rippled once more, like dying fireplace embers revived by the gentle puff of a breath.
Then, silently, it glided forward into the dark hole in the rock wall.
Chapter 68
1479, the cave, Nicaragua
Bertie stared at the cave wall in front of him as he went about his business. One-handed, he panned the torch across the strange painted markings in front of him. Having spent a week in this long-lost city, some of these symbols he recognized now. He’d seen their distinct shapes in the decor of the temple buildings, in the colourful tapestries of beads that hung everywhere. Even in the designs these people had painted, and tattooed, on their faces.
The meanings of these symbols, however, were still no clearer to him.
He reflected for a moment on what Adam had told them – that this whole society had evolved around what their ancestors had once upon a time discovered beneath the ground. Their written language, their costumes, their art, even the city itself borrowed the circular design of that subterranean chamber.
The poor young fellow had posited two theories: that either these people had stumbled across the chamber and built their city around it; or, far more likely, they had been living here when the Archaeologists arrived, and had been in awe of them, perhaps even honoured by those ‘gods’ with the task of guarding the chamber, protecting it from prying eyes.
And for hundreds, perhaps even thousands, of years they had.
‘Then we came along, roused an unspeakable creature from the depths of Hell and let it destroy everything.’ Those had been Adam’s words.
His mind flashed images of what he’d witnessed in the last few hours and he bit his lip and tried to think of other things – homely, banal, normal things.
His unpleasant boss Delbert’s ugly pug face.
The Fox and Firkin public house, down the bottom of Farringdon Street.
Mrs Chichester, his ample-bosomed and ruddy-faced landlady.
His small, bare bedroom.
His parents.
Somehow, all those images and memories seemed one step removed from him. No longer were they the images of a very familiar and wholly unexciting life. No. They were now glimpses of another young man’s life.
In just these last few days, Bertie realized, everything about him had changed. Everything he thought he knew about this world was wrong. The ordered nature of things, the predictable Newtonian safety of a clockwork universe … all of that was wrong, wrong, wrong.
The universe was chaotic and incomprehensible to him now. Worse than that, the future wasn’t the gleaming utopian dream he’d always imagined it might be: a world where the innovations of science would provide kingly comfort and luxury to every man, woman and child on the planet.
No. The future was a frightening place. In his lifetime, there would be things called ‘world wars’, where science would be leveraged to make terrible devices of wholesale destruction. Where murder would be conducted on an industrial scale.
And moreover, this terrifying future – if Miss Carter was to be believed – was ultimately doomed.
‘Bertie …?’
He turned to his left at the sound of the voice. Soft, female … coming out of the darkness. He panned the torch round and, emerging out of the gloom, he saw a small figure.
Sal.
She took a tentative step towards him.
‘What … how …?’ Bertie quickly buttoned up his flies and backed up one step. He swallowed nervously, all of a sudden his mouth was bone-dry. ‘Miss V-Vikram – Saleena, how … how d-did you …!’
She shook her head, frowned. She looked lost. ‘I … I don’t know … I’m not sure. I remember stepping into that force field. Then it’s all jumbled up. Things … nothing making sense to me. I’m a bit confused, to be honest.’
Bertie could see her face in the envelope of light. She looked afraid and very confused. Traumatized. Like a child.
A lost and frightened child.
Yet he had seen her just a few hours ago, her face as part of a monster. Seen that face become a snarling mockery of itself, a rictus on a deformed jackal-like skull. A head on a long, distended neck, one of many.
Bertie recalled a medieval engraving he’d seen once in a museum, ‘The Whore of Babylon’, picturing the beast on which she rode – a beast so similar, a beast with seven heads, each one depicting a different Catholic sin.
‘Bertie …’ She stepped closer, there were tears on her cheeks. ‘I’m so frightened.’
The poor girl must have escaped the hell she was trapped in. Perhaps the monster had simply seen her face in that hellish dimension and decided to copy it.
Cruelly chosen to mimic her, to make a monster of her.
‘You poor, poor thing,’ he cooed softly. ‘Come …’ He stretched his arms out towards her, to hold her. She looked like she desperately needed that right now.
She smiled. ‘Thank you for being so kind.’ She
reached towards him, and as she did, Bertie felt the knuckles and fingers of his extended hand prickle from an intense heat.
Instinctively, his hand recoiled before it burned.
And then he understood what he was sharing this small dark space with. He began to back up, one faltering step, then another.
‘Don’t go,’ she pleaded softly. ‘Don’t leave me here alone.’
He shook his head. Prickles of sweat rolled down his waxen face. The heat was increasing, he could feel it burning his cheeks. He could feel it through his linen shirt. ‘You … you … you’re not her – you’re n-not Saleena.’
‘I don’t want to be left all alone.’ Her eyes spilled more tears, her lips curled. ‘Not alone.’ She cocked her head as she looked at him.
‘You were so kind to me.’ She gazed up at him with a face that ached with remorse, with grieving for what-might-have-beens. ‘I remember … I remember you brought me such a lovely cake once …’
Her fingers brushed a clump of damp moss on the cave wall. It instantly smouldered, smoked, then burst into flames. ‘Don’t let me be all alone … in there … for eternity …’ The flames flickered momentarily, sending shadow-puppets dancing across the painted wall.
‘Come with me, Bertie … we could be together, you and me.’
Bertie whimpered. ‘P-please … don’t hurt me! Don’t –’
‘I’m not a monster.’ Hot tears dripped from her jaw and spilled on to the floor. They hissed as they spattered on the cool stone. ‘Don’t leave me here.’
He turned and ran. ‘IT’S HERE!’
Chapter 69
1479, the cave, Nicaragua
The portal shimmered before them. An eight-foot-wide orb that revealed the faint undulating, reassuring blue glow of computer screens and a flickering light bulb dangling on a flex from a low brick ceiling.
‘About time!’ Liam blew a sigh of relief. ‘I was beginning to think that transponder of yours was broken,’ he said to Rashim.
Rashim smiled. ‘For a minute there, so was I.’
Liam reached out for Maddy and helped her to her feet. ‘Come on, Mads, we’re going home now.’
She nodded. Clasped his shoulder, then hugged him. ‘It’s just you and me now,’ she whispered into his neck.
‘Aye,’ he replied softly. He knew what she was saying. They were leaving Sal behind, or what was left of her. She was gone. Gone for good. Leaving Adam behind too. Departing felt like an act of betrayal, abandonment. Cowardice.
‘Aye, I know.’ He sighed. ‘But we still got each other.’
Just then they heard Bertie’s voice echoing from the rear of the cave. And an unintelligible, high-pitched and lady-like scream.
Bob and Becks turned towards the sound. Both of them stepped into the gloom and stood side by side, a closed wall protecting the others.
‘Caution!’ barked Becks. ‘I am detecting an energy surge approaching us. Twenty yards away.’
Bob looked back at them. ‘You should leave. Now!’
They heard the clack and scrape of boot heels, then Bertie emerged out of the darkness, wide rolling eyes, his ashen face glistening with sweat. ‘It’s heeere!’ he screamed. ‘It’s right behind me!’
He pushed his way past the support units.
‘Go! Go through!’ Liam yelled. He grabbed Bertie’s arm and roughly shoved him towards the portal. Bertie tossed aside any reservations he’d had about stepping back into chaos space and leaped headfirst into the floating orb.
‘You too,’ Liam said to Maddy.
She shook her head and took him in her arms again. ‘Not without you.’
‘Don’t worry, I’m not staying!’
‘Fifteen yards and closing!’ called out Becks.
‘Go!’ Liam stepped out of Maddy’s embrace. ‘Go! I’ll be right behind you!’
She disappeared into the portal, her eyes staying locked on his until she vanished from view. Rashim followed her a second later.
Just then the sun finally breached the distant horizon, and the blood-red light of dawn flooded into the deepest recesses of the cave.
‘Liam!’ said Bob. ‘You must leave now!’
He was standing right beside the portal. One small jump and he’d be through it. ‘I’m not leaving without the pair of you.’
‘We will protect you,’ said Becks.
‘Oh Jay-zus, stuff that! Just get back here and go through!’
The support units seemed to weigh that up for a second, then backed up towards the portal. The light of the sun reached further into the depths of the cave and Liam caught a glimpse of something moving slowly among the shifting shadows.
He slapped Bob’s shoulder. ‘Go!’
Bob scowled. ‘I will protect –’
‘I’m right here, right next to it!’ He nodded at the portal. ‘I’ll be through straight after you two! Now for the love of God … GO! That’s an order!’
Bob nodded and stepped through.
Becks looked at Liam sternly. ‘Do not delay unnecessarily.’ Then she too stepped into the shimmering displacement field.
Liam planted his feet, ready to leap into the sphere, but something caused him to pause. Perhaps it was curiosity. He’d heard Rashim’s and Bertie’s descriptions of the manifestation the seeker had assumed in the temple hall: Sal’s head on the end of a long snake-like neck. A head that had turned into a skull.
He couldn’t bring himself to believe that. They must have been mistaken – perhaps it was a face similar to hers. Maybe the seeker was simply copying faces it had seen.
He couldn’t believe that this thing was actually her, or even partially her. And if it really was … maybe he might be able to get through to her.
Then he saw her. Sal, in the flesh, the crimson light of the rising sun picking her head and one bare shoulder out of the dark.
‘Hello, Liam,’ she said. A casual greeting. Just as if she’d wandered into their Brooklyn archway with a basket of laundry under one arm.
He tried to offer her a smile to hide the fact he was trembling. ‘Hey, Sal.’ His voice warbled uncontrollably. ‘How’re you doing there?’
She cocked her head. Her dark fringe flopped down over one eye. ‘It’s been a long while. I almost forgot what you looked like.’
‘You’ve only been gone days, Sal.’
She laughed. The sound was a dry rattle, little more than a bitter sneer. The one eye he could see rolled up until only the white of it was visible. She closed her eyes. ‘Far longer than a few days, Liam. Far longer.’
She remained silent for a few moments, remained standing in the darkness. The sun continued to rise, its warming rays reaching back into the gloom and causing the shadows to chase each other in slow motion across craggy rock surfaces.
‘I’m dying, Liam,’ she whispered. ‘As I stand here … I’m slowly dying.’
Energy. He realized her energy was draining away with every second she existed outside of chaos space.
‘I know.’ He turned to look at the portal. The others would be anxiously waiting for him. ‘Is that what you want, Sal? To die?’
Her eyes still closed, she frowned. Her lips twitched, emotions chasing each other across her face like the shadows behind her.
‘I wish I could help you,’ he said, his voice catching. ‘Why did you do it? Why did you step in?’
‘I … I don’t remember. So long ago now.’
Her body was gone. She was just energy. A ghost. What was once Sal for real was gone. What stood before him was an echo of her, a facsimile constructed from energy.
‘Sal?’
‘Yes … Liam?’
‘You know, you have a choice.’
‘Choice.’ Her eyes opened. All-white. An unsettling sight. He realized it wasn’t that her eyes were still rolled upwards, but instead the pupils had become a frosted, opaque, milky colour.
‘You don’t have to be stuck in chaos space forevermore.’
She cocked her head again, smiled. ‘If I stand
here? Is that what you’re saying?’
‘If you stay right there –’ Liam nodded – ‘you’ll fade away to nothing. You’ll be at peace.’
She nodded. That seemed to be a comforting prospect.
‘Is that what you want, Sal?’ He took a tentative step forward. ‘If you’d like, I could stay with you … until the very end.’
For a moment she considered that. A fleeting smile played across her lips as she imagined the possibility; an end to the sadness, an end to the torment. But the voices of others in her head cried out angrily that their say in the matter was just as valid as hers.
To be outside of the torment of chaos space was a blessed relief to them all. To be standing on firm ground, to be in a space of three comprehensible dimensions was a joy. To touch, to feel the flesh of real living beings was an addictive sensation.
But to remain outside indefinitely, like this – and not return to replenish their strength? Only one trapped soul in this colony of diminished form was ready to end its existence like that.
‘Sal?’ said Liam softly. ‘Is that what you want? Do you want to go?’
She felt the control that she’d exercised over the others begin to slip. She felt her mind fading away, her internal voice becoming lost in the cacophony of voices screaming inside her.
‘Sal? Is that what you want?’
Yes … Liam … that’s what I want …
But her reply was a whisper. A chorus of voices shouted it down. An angry chorus that wanted to rip this living thing to pieces. To feel the texture of its flesh, its bones, its blood. To feel it singe, crisp and curl like cooked meat. Then … then, to step into the glow of that shimmering orb behind. They could feel the energy emanating from it, like the warmth of a campfire on a cold night.
Needed, so needed that energy. But before that … one last taste of something alive.
‘We want you …’
The slight shape of the girl phased out of view and became an amorphous cloud of energy. Liam realized the rippling air in front of him was now no longer his friend. Whatever part of Sal had been standing there was now gone, swallowed up inside this malevolent form. It began to move, slowly gliding towards him.