Everville

  Powerless to help them, Joe could only wander on, determined to at least be a witness to what the Iad perpetrated. Perhaps there was some higher court in which its crimes would be judged. If so, he would testify.

  There was a large bonfire burning in the street ahead, its flames brightening the filthy air. Approaching, he saw that it was attended by perhaps twenty people, who were circling it hand in hand, praying aloud.

  “You who are divided, be whole in our hearts—”

  Surely they were appealing to the ’shu, he thought.

  “You who are divided—”

  Their prayer apparently went unheard, however. Though the Iad had left off its destruction of the city there were remnants of its shadow presence haunting the streets, and one such portion, no more than a dozen feet tall, and resembling a pillar of darkness, was approaching the fire from the far end of the street. One of the group, a young woman with a mouth that resembled a fleshy rose, broke the circle and started to retreat from the fire, shaking her head wildly. The worshipper to her left caught hold of her hand and proceeded to haul her back to the fire.

  “Hold on!” he said to her. “It’s our only hope!”

  But the damage had been done. The circle, once broken, had lost any charm it might have possessed, and now each of the worshippers succumbed to the Iad’s baleful influence. One of the men pulled out a knife and proceeded to threaten the air in front of him. Another reached into the flames, searing his hand and yelling for some horror or other to keep away from him.

  As he did so, he looked up through the fire, and his agonized face suddenly cleared of its confusions. He pulled his hand out of the fire and stared at Joe.

  “Look . . . ” he murmured.

  Joe was as astonished as the man witnessing him. “You see me?” he said.

  The man failed to hear him. He was too busy yelling for his fellow worshippers to “Look! Look!”

  Another had seen him now; a woman whose face was a mass of bruises, but who at the sight of him broke into an ecstatic smile.

  “Look how it shines—” she said.

  “It heard,” somebody else murmured. “We prayed and it heard.”

  “What are you seeing?” Joe said to them. But they made no sign of hearing him. They simply watched the place where his spirit stood, and wept and gaped and offered up thanks.

  One of their number looked back down the street towards the approaching Iad. It was approaching no longer. Either it had been recalled into the body of its nation, or else it had retreated from the force of joy that suddenly surrounded the fire.

  The young woman who had first broken the circle now approached Joe. There were tears running down her cheeks, and her body was shaking, but she was fearless in her desire to touch this vision.

  “Let me know you,” she said as she raised her hand towards Joe. “Be with me forever and ever.”

  The words, and the need in her eyes, disturbed him. Whatever had happened here, it was nothing he comprehended, much less sought. He was still Joe Flicker. Still and only.

  “I can’t . . . ” he said, though he knew they couldn’t hear him, and willed himself away from the place.

  It was harder to leave than it’d been to arrive. Their gazes seemed to slow him, and he had to struggle to free himself from them.

  Only when he was fifty yards away down the street, and their desire no longer held a claim over him, did he dare look back. They were in each other’s arms, weeping for joy. All except the woman who’d tried to touch him. She was still looking down the street in his direction, and though he was too far from her to see her eyes he felt her gaze upon him, and knew he would not readily be free of it.

  * * *

  III

  Texas!” Phoebe yelled. “Damn you, can you hear me?”

  She had long ago vacated the mirror chamber for the very good reason that it was close to collapse. Now, in a tunnel lined with his faces, she stood and demanded his presence. He didn’t come, however. Remembering how much the thought of a woman’s blood being spilled here had distressed him, she dug through the rock shards underfoot until she located something sharp, pulled up her sleeve, and without giving herself time to think twice, opened a four-inch cut just above her wrist. Her blood had never looked redder. She squealed with the pain of it, but she let it flow, and flow, sinking back against the wall as her head spun.

  “What are you doing?”

  Almost instantly he rose before her in the form of liquid rock, raging.

  “I told you: no blood!”

  “So get me out of here,” she said, chilly with a sudden sweat “or I’ll just keep bleeding.”

  The shaking was getting worse by the moment. In the walls there was a grinding sound, as though some vast engine was slipping its gears.

  “I am the rock,” he said.

  “So you keep saying.”

  “If I said you were safe, then safe you were.”

  The wall behind her shook so violently several of his rejected faces cracked and fell to the ground. “Are you going to take me up, or not?” she said.

  “I’ll take you,” he said, unknitting his feet from the floor of the passage and approaching her. “But you must come with me on my terms.”

  She looked at him through a throbbing haze. “What . . . are . . . your terms?” she said. His face was cruder than she’d previously seen it, she realized, like a mask hewn with a dull axe.

  “If I take you,” he said, “then it must be here.” He opened his arms. “For your safety, you must be cradled in the rock. Agreed?”

  She nodded. It was not such a terrible idea. He was a King, he was a rock, and he had a heart for love, even if it was a fossil. “Agreed,” she said, and clamping her hand to her cut arm to stem the flow, let him gather her into his embrace.

  SEVEN

  I

  Grillo was no expert when it came to babies but he was damn sure the sound coming from the child in Jo-Beth’s arms wasn’t healthy.

  “What’s wrong with her?” he said.

  “I don’t know.”

  “It sounds like she’s choking.”

  “I think maybe you should stop.”

  The baby seemed to be having minor convulsions now, and with every bump in the road they were worsening. Grillo slowed down a little, but Jo-Beth wasn’t satisfied. “Stop!” she said. “Just for a minute or two.”

  He glanced down at little Amy, who was making a pitiful sobbing sound. Reluctantly, he pulled over and brought the car to a halt.

  “She wants her Daddy,” Jo-Beth said.

  “He’ll catch us up.”

  “I know,” the girl went on. The child’s sobs were subsiding now. “Why don’t you leave us here?” she said. “He won’t come looking for you, as long as he’s found us.”

  “What the hell are you talking about?”

  “I know you did what you thought was right. But it wasn’t. Amy knows it and so do I.”

  “You’re talking about Tommy-Ray—” Grillo said softly.

  “We have to be together,” she said. “Or we’ll die. We’ll all of us die.”

  Grillo looked back down at the child in her arms. “I don’t know whether you’re mixed up, fucked up, or just plain crazy, but I’m not trusting you with Amy any longer.” He reached down to take the baby from her. She instantly drew the child tight to her body, but Grillo wasn’t about to be denied. He dug his arm down around the bundle and pulled Amy out of her mother’s arms.

  To his surprise, Jo-Beth didn’t attempt to reclaim her. Instead she glanced back down the road.

  “He’s coming,” she said, reaching for the handle of the door.

  “Stay inside.”

  “But he’s coming—”

  “I said—”

  Too late. She had the handle down, and was pushing open the door. He grabbed for her arm, and caught it momentarily, but she slipped him and stumbled out into the road.

  “Get back in here!” he yelled.

  A gust of wind rocked t
he car. Then a second, more violent than the first. Jo-Beth was standing in the middle of the road now, turning on her heels, and lightly touching her breasts. Again, the car rocked. This time Grillo knew he couldn’t wait for her. If he got out to fetch her, she’d outrun him, and all the time her beloved Death-Boy was getting closer, closer.

  He gently laid the child on the passenger seat and was reaching over to pull the door closed when a blast of bitter, dirty air hit him in the face, sending him sprawling across the seat. The back of his skull hit the window hard, but grabbing the wheel he started to haul himself up again, reaching for the baby with his free hand as he did so. The dust was filling the interior, forming fingers to scrabble at his eyes, and reaching down into his throat to choke him.

  Blinded, he kept reaching for the child, as the car’s rocking became steadily more violent. He found the blanket, and began to pull it towards him, but as he did so the ghosts pushed the car over onto two wheels, where it teetered, its metalwork creaking. He inched the blanket towards him, fearful that at any moment the dusty dead would claim the baby from its folds, while the legion threw its will and wind against the car, plainly determined to overturn it. Perhaps some of his tormentors had been summoned to help, because the fingers tearing at his eyes and throat had retreated. He wiped his face against his shoulder to clear his sight, and opened his eyes only to find that the blanket in his hand was empty. Grabbing the dashboard he hauled himself up towards the open door, determined to get Amy back. The windshield shattered as he climbed, and through the dust he saw the abductors’ faces, four or five of them, carved of the dirty air, and leering at his desperation.

  “Bastards!” he yelled at them. “Bastards!”

  The sound of his voice brought a sob, not from the ghosts but from Amy. They’d not taken her after all; she’d slipped between the front seats, and was lying, as yet unharmed, on the floor behind him.

  “It’s okay,” he said to her, forsaking his handhold to reach for her. As he did so the car’s teeterings reached the point of no return, and it was flung over onto its side. Through the din of breaking glass and concertinaed metal he heard the voice of the Death-Boy, roaring, “Stop!”

  The order came too late. The car was pushed over onto its roof, which buckled under the impact. The remaining windows blew inwards, the glove-compartment spilled its contents. Tumbling in a hail of trash, Grillo’s instincts overtook his conscious thought, and he drew the baby into his arms as he fell. His frail body snapped and tore. He felt something in his belly and chest, like a sudden dyspepsia.

  Then the vehicle rocked to a halt, and there was something close to silence. For a moment he thought the child was dead, but it seemed she was simply shocked into silence, because he heard her ragged breathing close to him in the darkness.

  He was upside-down, his legs akimbo, and something hot was running down his body from his groin. He smelled it now, sharp and familiar. He was pissing himself. Very gingerly he tried to shift himself, but there was something preventing him doing so. He reached up to his chest and his fingers found a spike of wet metal sticking out of his body a few inches behind his left clavicle. It gave him no pain, though there was little doubt he was skewered from back to front.

  “Oh Lord . . . ” he said to himself, very softly, then feebly reached out towards the source of Amy’s breathing. The motion seemed to take an age. He had time, while he reached and reached, to think of Tesla and hope she would be spared the sight of him like this. She had endured so much and after all her searching and suffering had gained so very little.

  His fingers had found Amy’s face, and inch by inch he passed his hand over her tiny body. His hand was becoming numb, but as far as he could gather she was not bloodied, which was some comfort. Then, as he once again reached up to her face she took hold of his finger and grasped it. He was astonished at her strength. Delighted too, for it surely meant she’d not sustained any significant harm. He demanded his body draw a little extra breath, and his muscles obliged him. He drew a sip of air into his seeping lungs, enough for a word or two.

  He used it wisely.

  “I’m here,” he said to Amy, and died so quietly she didn’t know he’d gone.

  * * *

  II

  Even before they rounded the corner Tesla heard the ghost’s cacophony: a rising wail of complaint. She pulled the bike over, and parked on the curve, just out of sight.

  “Whatever we find around that corner,” she told Howie as they dismounted, “keep control of yourself.”

  “I just want my wife and baby back.”

  “And we’ll get them,” Tesla said. “But Howie, brute force isn’t going to do us any good. One word and we’re both dead. Think about that. You’re not going to be much use to Jo-Beth and Amy dead.”

  Point made, Tesla headed off round the corner. There were no streetlights along the road, but there was enough light from moon and stars for the scene to be plain enough. Grillo’s car sat battered and overturned. Jo-Beth was standing clear of it, apparently unharmed. There was no sign of either Grillo or the baby.

  As for Tommy-Ray, he was disciplining his troops, the ghosts gathered around his feet like a pack of beaten curs.

  “Fucking stupid!” he yelled at them. “Stupid!”

  He reached down into their shifting substance and hauled two ragged handfuls of it up towards his face. It hung from his fingers in tatters.

  “Why don’t you learn?” he raged.

  The murmurs of the ghosts grew more panicky. Some of them turned their wretched faces up towards him in supplication. Others hid their heads, apparently knowing what was coming.

  Tommy-Ray opened his mouth, wider than any natural anatomy allowed, and put the muck-laced ether between his teeth. Then he literally inhaled it, sucking the dirty air into his body. Tesla saw two phantom faces, sobbing and gasping, disappear down the Death-Boy’s gullet, while the next in line scrabbled to avoid joining them. But the lesson was apparently over, because now he grabbed the strands of matter that hung from the corners of his mouth and bit down on them, grinding them between his teeth. The ether dropped away from either side of his chin. He let the severed ends drop.

  The survivors murmured their gratitude and shrank away.

  The whole episode had taken perhaps fifteen seconds, during which time Tesla and Howie had halved the distance between the corner and the wreckage. They were now no more than twenty-five yards from the car, and in danger of being seen if Tommy-Ray chanced to look in their direction. Luckily, he had another distraction: Jo-Beth. He had gone to her and was speaking to her face to face. She didn’t retreat from him. Even when his hands went up to her face—stroked her cheek, her hair, her lips—she stood unmoving before him.

  “Christ . . . ” Howie murmured.

  Tesla glanced over her shoulder. “There’s something alive in there,” she said, nodding back at Grillo’s car.

  Howie looked. “I don’t see anything,” he said, his gaze returning to the dalliance between the twins.

  “He can’t do that,” he growled, and pushing past Tesla, started towards them. He was gone so fast Tesla had no choice but to act out at the same time. She moved off towards the car, scanning the dark snarl of metal for further evidence of life. She found it too; a tiny motion. She was perhaps a dozen yards from the car now, the stinging smell of gasoline filling her head. Bending low and moving fast she moved round the far side of the vehicle, putting the wreckage between her and Tommy-Ray. Though she tried to tune out his voice, snatches of what he was telling Jo-Beth drifted her way.

  “There’ll be more . . . ” he murmured. “Lots more . . . ”

  She knelt in the pooled gasoline and peered into the wreckage, using Tommy-Ray’s talk to cover her calling: “Grillo—?”

  As she spoke her eyes began to make sense of the tangled forms in front of her. There was an upturned seat; a litter of maps. And there among them, oh God, there, was Grillo’s arm. She reached out and touched it, whispering his name again. There
was no response. Ducking her head through the broken window she started to pull at the debris blocking her way to him. A drizzle of oil fell in her hair and ran down her face. She wiped it away from her eyes with the back of her hand and attacked the wreckage afresh. A portion of the seat came away this time, which she shoved to the side, offering her a fuller view of him. His face was half-turned towards her, and seeing him she said his name again, knowing in the same moment that her breath was wasted. He was dead, pierced by a spike of metal. Despite the horror of this it seemed from his expression that he’d not died in anguish. His worn face—which she had reached up to touch—was almost serene.

  As her fingers grazed his cheek, something moved in the darkness beyond him. Amy; it was Amy! Tesla inched into the creaking wreckage until her face was inches from Grillo’s pierced chest and peered over him. There was the baby, her eyes wet and wide in the murk, her hand clutching the index finger of Grillo’s left hand.

  There was no hope of moving the dead man, Tesla was certain; he and the vehicle were inextricably connected. Her only hope—and Amy’s—was to reach over the body, past the spike that had skewered Grillo, and ease the child between the ragged metal overhead and the corpse below. She crawled as far into the wreckage as space would allow, and stretched her arms across Grillo’s body—her breasts pressed against his sticky torso—to take hold of the infant.

  As she did so she heard Tommy-Ray’s voice.

  “Dead . . . ” he was saying.

  This time there was an audible response. Not from Jo-Beth, but from Howie. Tesla caught only a few of the words; enough to know he was addressing Jo-Beth, not her brother.