Not in the way he imagined.
He was running through the drooping, prickly grass on the skirt of the wood. Somewhere behind, Chris was shouting his name, but Peter could not stop. His legs had gone mad; they had become a blur beneath his body. Stupid Gary with his stupid, ugly face. His eyes had nothing in them, they were just jelly, and his mouth was a red hole of anger. Peter laughed as he ran. Everyone was stupid: his stomping father with his dark, closed-in face; his mother who fluttered like a limp handkerchief on the wind; even Chris, who made trouble with people on purpose. Peter knew he did not belong with any of them. The trees were beckoning to him, urgently, shaking their branches, as if to say, ‘hurry, hurry.’ Peter ran beneath their shadow and the sounds of the outside world faded away, as if the summer-laden branches were a shutter that snapped shut behind him. He could hear only birdsong and the tramp of his own feet. Spears of light pierced the trees, illuminating the grass below, making it radiant. Among the tree roots, bright red fungi bulged out of the ground, covered with fairy spots.
Peter ran up one hill and down another, further and further away from the common. He did not feel tired or out of breath. He was a young stag bounding through his domain, the sun warm against his hide. The trees were unbelievably tall around him; he would not have been surprised to see a dinosaur lumbering out of them. This was an ancient time; he could feel it.
He came to a pool, where willows dipped their lissom bony branches in the water. Behind him now he thought he could hear the crash and rustle of pursuit; the hunt. He was caught in a dream state, where half of him believed he really was a stag and that hunters with dogs would bring him down. Another part of him knew it was only Chris, desperately searching, perhaps with Gary somewhere behind him, lumbering and hollering. Peter ached to escape. He did not want to talk to anyone. He did not want to go home.
He saw her among the willows, a pale arm raised against a pleated tree-trunk. She could have stepped out from the heart of the tree, a willow maid in soft green robes. Closer to, she looked like a real woman, wearing a faded summer dress covered in sprigs of green leaves. She held out her hand to him, ‘Come here, little man. Come here.’ It was as if she knew he sought a hiding place and she could show it to him. She did not wait for him to take her hand. Once she saw he was following her, she ducked beneath the willow branches and scrambled into the undergrowth. He could hear her moving ahead of him. Her trail was easy to follow. He came to a nest in the ferns and found her crouching there. She beckoned, saying nothing. He went to her arms and she held him down against the earth. She breathed as the forest did, silently but immensely. She smelled of mown grass, of mushrooms.
Someone crashed past them. Peter felt heat, smelled sweat, shied away from the chaotic motion. Then whoever it was had dashed away, further into the forest.
Peter lay against the strange woman, who had her arms loosely around him. She did not speak, but lightly caressed his hair, humming in an oddly tuneless way beneath her breath. Peter felt totally at peace. Tales of his earlier childhood drifted through his mind. Was this some fairy queen come to claim him? Would he ever go back now?
After a while, the woman stood up, pulling Peter with her. He offered no resistance - did not even want to. Instead, he took her hand and walked with her from the woods. Her name was Effie. She lived in a small house at the edge of the common, where there were no telegraph poles, no urban sprawl and the only dogs belonged to her. At night, they could hear the sea as if it was only yards away. He lived with her for nearly ten years.
Jay came out of a daze to see the grave face of the boy looking up at her. Was he a ghost or just an illusion? He still looked like a ten year old boy. ‘Why are you here?’ Jay asked him. ‘If you disappeared from the world, did you go to Lestholme? Was that where Effie lived?’
Peter shook his head. Jay realised that as she’d been speaking, he had changed. She didn’t notice the transformation until it had occurred. Before them stood a young man, dark hair falling over his face, whose features were sensitive, the eyes large. It appeared he could be whatever age he chose.
‘It was a place like Lestholme,’ Peter said, ‘and maybe it’s even on the same layer, but it was different too. It isn’t near here at all.’
While Jay and Peter had been speaking, Dex had crept forward like a cautious yet curious cat. Now he drew in his breath sharply, grabbed Jay’s arm and pointed at Peter with a rigid finger. ‘That’s him,’ he said, his voice full of wonder.
‘Yes, I know,’ Jay soothed. ‘It’s Peter.’ She wondered whether Dex was losing his mind.
‘No, you don’t understand,’ Dex said, his face screwed up. ‘I mean this is the person who Rhys Lorrance killed. I saw him dead.’ He turned to Lacey. ‘This is a hideous thing to do - show me images of Pete - then this. What are you trying to do to me?’
‘Hold on,’ Jay said. ‘Calm down, Dex. We’re here to find answers. You don’t know who this person is yet.’ She addressed the young man before her. ‘Are you Peter, whom Dex knew as a boy?’
‘Yes. I was him.’
Jay glanced at Dex. ‘You see?’ She turned back to Peter. ‘Right. And are you also the person injured in Rhys Lorrance’s house?’
‘He tried to hurt me.’
‘Dex thought you were dead.’
‘He was dead!’ Dex cried.
‘Hush!’ Jay said. ‘Why were you there, Peter? Had you followed Dex?’
Peter smiled. ‘No. Effie taught me things. I learned about the world, the secrets behind it. Effie gave me a responsibility. When I grew older, I met friends of hers. These people are aware in a way that most are not. They offered me training, and I took it.’
‘Dex was offered a similar thing,’ Jay said, squeezing Dex’s arm, ‘but from the other side, so to speak.’
Dex rubbed his face, uttered a sound of anguish. ‘I can’t take this. I really can’t’
Peter took a step forward, although he did not touch Dex. Jay thought she could see a luminous blue glow emanating from Peter’s body that poured over Dex like smoke. ‘You must find peace, Chris. Like I did.’
Dex closed his eyes, surrounded by a caul of blue light. ‘Tell me how,’ he said in a low voice. ‘I can’t see how.’
‘Acceptance,’ Peter said. ‘That is the beginning of it. When I returned to the real world, as you would call it, I knew things that most people didn’t. I knew how to traverse the layers. I had an eye for truth and for the evil that lurks in a human heart. I could smell it, and when a stench came to me, I would have to find it.’
‘You are one of Lorrance’s enemies,’ Jay said. She turned to Lacey. ‘Was this who contacted you?’
She nodded. ‘Yes. It was after what had happened at Emmertame. Peter had sought to disempower my father...’
‘I failed,’ Peter said. He clenched a fist before his face, and to Jay it felt as if he pulled upon invisible strings that were attached to her mind. The images were not as vivid as those of Peter’s childhood.
She saw shadowy forms around her. Peter had waited a long time to come to Emmertame. He had worked carefully, speaking to the right people, to infiltrate Lorrance’s party crowd. Effie had said to him, ‘This man is an enemy of the world’ and Peter had pledged himself to destroying this evil. Jay saw that although Peter and his kind worked against the powers of anti-life, they themselves were not above killing. She saw the moment when Lorrance realised it was no cheap little whore he held in his arms, but something more powerful, more dangerous. He had been afraid, for just a few short moments, but fear turned quickly to rage. He had acted rashly, perhaps out of a sense of knowing his nemesis had smelled him out. It was true that he hadn’t pushed Peter over the banisters. That had been the result of a battle of wills, a battle Peter had lost. Jay felt the sickening impact as his body hit the tiles; she felt the ruin in the flesh, the broken bones, the burst organs. But Peter had survived. She was with him in the cellar, felt him drawing upon the energy of the forest to heal him. It had taken a long ti
me.
Now, Jay looked into his face. She did not know if he was more or less than human. This world around her was not her world. ‘Lester Charney thought Lorrance killed you for his benefit.’
Peter smiled bitterly. ‘Rhys Lorrance would have happily let him believe that. He dares not display weakness to men like Charney. I had got too close. Charney would have been furious if he’d known.’
‘Why didn’t you get in touch with me?’ Dex said angrily. ‘For fuck’s sake, you could have helped me, warned me, got me out of that mess…’
‘I couldn’t. You were too close to Lorrance. He had a certain amount of control over you and we couldn’t risk exposure.’
It wasn’t just that, Jay thought. People like Lacey and Peter, who were perhaps just small fry in the cabals opposed to Charney, considered themselves superior to someone like Dex, or herself for that matter. They weren’t that different to their enemies. She sensed they were capable of using people just as dispassionately.
‘I tried to frighten Lorrance,’ Dex said. ‘I wanted him to think I was dead, that I could haunt him.’
‘Then don’t you see?’ Peter said. ‘He lost his power over you. You visited his house, invaded his domain, yet he could not compel you to act according to his will. That is your evidence of freedom. You escaped him the moment you made the decision to slip out of reality.’
Jay found Peter’s tone patronising. He knew that Dex’s fear had kept him shackled, and part of him despised that weak human emotion. Peter directed his attention towards her, clearly able to perceive her thoughts. ‘People like Lacey and myself, we are rare. You cannot judge us. We have chosen to see beyond the safety nets, and that gives us freedom. We can meet in all places of the world, all the layers, and there are many.’ Before Jay could respond, he reached out and curled his fingers around Dex’s hands. ‘You were not responsible for anything that happened to me. Perhaps, in a way, the reverse is true. If I hadn’t been who I was, and you hadn’t known me so well when I was young, perhaps this world, the unseen, would never have touched you.’
‘I didn’t recognise you,’ Dex said, his voice bewildered. ‘When you were lying there. I just did what Lorrance said.’
‘Don’t punish yourself for that,’ Peter said. ‘I want you to know that you will be free. I can help you cast out your demons.’
‘How?’ Dex asked, frowning. ‘Join with you and your people?’ He sneered. ‘That’s not the answer I want.’
Peter shook his head. ‘That will not be necessary. You need to finish what you started. Release the songs.’
‘Yeah, right, that’s easy,’ Dex snarled.
‘But it is. Release them here. Release them from your heart, your mind. Sing them.’
Dex glanced at Jay, who shrugged. ‘Try,’ she said. ‘It can’t do any harm.’
‘You must do this,’ Lacey urged. ‘It will make things happen.’
‘What things? Dex asked.
Lacey clenched her fists at her sides. ‘It will smash my father’s nest to pieces. He’ll lose his power.’
Dex hesitated. Jay could almost hear his thoughts. He was wondering whether by handing Lacey and Peter what they wanted he was merely shifting the balance of power from one undesirable group to another. Like Jay, he was not convinced Lorrance’s opposition was any better than he was.
‘I want assurances,’ Dex said. ‘I want Jay and me to be safe and free. Jay must be given back everything that was taken from her.’
Peter and Lacey did not move, but Jay sensed that in some arcane way they had exchanged a glance. ‘Jay will have what she wants,’ Peter said and looked Jay in the eye. ‘But be careful what you ask for.’
‘Yes,’ Jay said, ‘I don’t want to wake up and find myself in bed beside Gus, for example, as if none of this ever happened. I’ve been through shit, but some of the changes have my approval.’
Peter smiled, in a totally human way that made Jay feel better about him. ‘Precisely.
‘Sing the songs,’ Lacey said to Dex. ‘Sing now.’
He sighed. ‘I haven’t sung since I walked away from my life.’
‘It doesn’t matter,’ Peter said. ‘You don’t have to give the vocal performance of your life. It’s the intention that counts.’
Dex nodded thoughtfully. ‘OK.’ He closed his eyes.
Jem reached for Jay’s hand.
His voice was shaky at first, slightly out of tune. Jay had heard these songs a hundred times, but had never known their true meaning. Now, her skin prickled as she listened to them. The words seemed almost irrelevant, what was important were the feelings that expressed themselves in Dex’s ragged tone. She could almost see his bewilderment and fear, his self-disgust, his anger. It was not a comfortable experience being surrounded by those emotions. Dex’s voice became stronger, louder, as the lyrics to ‘Losing Me’ burst out of him. He could almost have been singing about a failed love affair: ‘You can’t make me into you, you can’t keep me near, because I’ve seen the truth of your heart, I’ve seen inside your fear.’
Jay felt as if she was shooting up out of her body to look down upon the scene below. Sounds had become colours. She could see them flaring out of Dex’s body, glittering beams that reached up towards the sky and rayed outwards to touch the world around him. The songs were truly being released. They were breaking away from him, becoming free, like sentient spirits. She had no doubt that this event must have some effect on the real world. It was too intense not to.
Lorrance had been wrong to get Dex to change the words, because ultimately, they’d meant little. It was the feeling inside the music itself that counted. When Dex disappeared, he should have left the songs behind, because then Sakrilege would have released them. They would have been played on millions of CD machines all over the world. The sentiments, and the power they contained, would have become free so much sooner. If only Dex had realised. Jay found herself laughing, back in her body. Beside her, Dex was silent, staring at her.
‘I’m sorry,’ she said, ‘don’t stop. I’m not laughing at you.’
‘I’ve finished, Jay,’ he said.
She put her hands to her mouth. ‘My God,’ she murmured.
Peter smiled at her. ‘You see, don’t you,’ he said quietly.
She nodded. ‘Oh yes. I see perfectly.’
‘Now you must go from this place,’ Peter said. ‘Lorrance is not your concern. You have my word he will no longer harm you.’
‘Are you sure of that?’ Jay said. ‘How long will it take for the songs to take effect? We have practicalities to deal with.
‘His downfall has already begun,’ Lacey said.
‘If we return to reality,’ Jay said, ‘how will things work out? Lorrance was not my only enemy. There was a woman, Gina, and my ex, Gus.’
‘Don’t worry about them,’ Peter said. ‘They are confined to one place, and because of that, you have the upper hand. The woman acts in ignorance. She is a void within, and has no concept of consequence. You should not blame her. She is caught in the tide.’
‘My father and his underlings will have other things to worry about now,’ Lacey said. ‘You will no longer seem so important to them. Trust us. We’re not lying.’
Peter inclined his head gently. ‘You are free to go home.’
As soon as he uttered these words, it seemed to Jay that the shadow world of the house began to grow dim. They had been shown what Lacey wanted them to see, Dex had done what was required of him, and now that reality was fading. ‘Did Lorrance put me in Lestholme?’ Jay asked urgently. ‘I have to know. How did I get there?’
‘You followed an instinct, that’s all,’ Peter answered. ‘You followed a story, and the story was partly your own.’
Lacey went to stand beside him and linked one of her arms through his. They looked liked archetypal characters: the Queen of the Elves and her gallant knight. ‘Peter and I have work to do,’ Lacey said. ‘You will see the results of it.’
Unexpectedly, Jem jumped forward
towards them. ‘Touch me,’ she said. Lacey reached out and gently placed her fingers against Jem’s outstretched hand. Jay saw nothing unusual; no visible exchange of energy or flare of light. Jem sighed and stepped backwards, her shoulders pressed against Jay’s chest. Peter and Lacey did not speak again. Behind them, the pillar of dark smoke still hovered on the stairs, but now it did not appear quite so looming and threatening.
Jem took hold of one of Jay’s hands and tugged it. She said nothing, but Jay knew she meant it was time to leave. She linked her arm through Dex’s and pulled him gently. Then, somehow, without seeming to move, they were outside the house. The great front door slammed shut in their faces. All was silent now and the house was in darkness. Jay glanced round. The wide heath-land was empty of presences. A fat moon hung low above the horizon and Jay’s hair was ruffled by the passing of a silent wind. When she spoke, her voice sounded muffled. ‘Are you all right, Dex?’
He nodded, his face set in an expression of shock.
‘Let’s go back to Lestholme.’
They walked back towards the distant line of forest.
Chapter Eleven
They heard the sounds of merriment long before they saw its source. Walking back through the beech and oak at the edge of the village, Jay heard singing and the music of a fiddle. The sky ahead was ruddy with a fiery glow. They emerged from the trees by the side of the pub, next to the village green, and here a celebration appeared to be in progress. A huge bonfire had been built in the middle of the green and was now burning savagely; glittering streams of orange sparks spiralled up towards the stars. Women were dancing around the fire, hair lashing, skirts swinging. Men stood in a circle around them, clapping rhythmically. One of them, perhaps one of the confirmed bachelors Jay had visited, played a hectic jig on a violin. It was a pagan scene, filled with ancient power.