At first, the woman on the bridge seemed to be just staring out at the lanes below her as people, one by one, died in their cars. There was no way she could have known what was going on beyond all the chaos and that was perhaps the saddest part of all. Sadder than the way she seemed frozen until she stumbled forward and doubled over the side. Sadder than the slow motion way she tipped forward and plunged to the ground with her Asda bags flying behind her, trailing magazines and fresh fruit. Already dead. The woman didn’t flail or scream as she fell, didn’t move at all, that’s how you could tell. Katie looked away before the woman got to ground level but she heard the sickening crunch of bones anyway.
“Don’t look.”
“Can I not listen too?” Katie shrank back into Shimma and hid her face into the soft jumper he wore. Her fingers curled around Jack’s and he gave her a reassuring squeeze.
I’m here. As long as you need.
There’s not enough time in the world.
There was no reply and Katie knew she was right. There wasn’t any more time to waste on feelings and fear.
“Haven’t you got anything that can help? A charm or weapons or anything?” She looked up at Shimma, suddenly younger than she had ever seemed. Even as a corpse there had been a harsh edge of decay around Katie, a slight rugged look to her that could only hint at a girl who was worn to the point of breaking, of some-one who had taken on the world and would do it again if she had to. Now, though... now, in the blink of an eye, that world-weariness had vanished and she was just a sixteen year old kid with pipe dreams of saving a whole lot of innocent souls. “Silver!” she yelled into his chest, pulling back and saying it again. “If I can figure out a way to get the Keepers to spell silver – a whole load of it – then it can just burn the bad out of them.”
“It won’t work.”
“Why not? I mean, it worked against Henry Lawson when I died.”
She felt Jack flinch in her hand. Maybe it was because Henry Lawson was his father. Maybe it was the reminder that Katie had died at his hands. Or, rather, at his whip. Whichever was true, she had not meant to hurt him. I’m sorry.
What for?
Jack, this – us - all of us – might be in danger here and I brought you all into it.
No. He switched to his real voice. “We chose to be here. Isn’t that right, Shimma? An’ if things kick off tonight… we’ll beat it together. Got it?”
An attempt at a nod and a smile failed miserably but the first flickerings of hope were coming back. “We can do this.”
I have no idea what or how but we can do it.
“Are they still-“
“No, they’ve stopped. It’s like-“
“They’ve only got enough energy to take a few people at a time. Dark souls have only a fraction of the power of the pure.”
“Yeah. How’d you know?”
“The Keepers told me.” Katie shrugged out of the taller man’s arms and settled herself inside Jack. His touch was cool and calming where Shimma had been human warm and full of nerves jumping under his skin. Jack combed sandy hair back with his fingers before clasping both hands around her waist. The position was natural enough and he had got used to kissing the back of her neck instead of the crown of her head but he couldn’t help wishing he had a few extra inches. A boyfriend should be tall enough to protect his girlfriend. “I can hear them.” She tapped the side of her head. Shimma glanced over at the lorry Dina had disappeared behind but didn’t go over. “She’s okay. Upset, shaking, trying not to be sick but okay. She just needs time.”
“They tell you that too?”
“Intuition.”
“New rule – no-one uses words I don’t understan’.”
Katie grinned at Jack. “Deal.” Then she turned back to the road. “So, we’re at a stalemate. The already dead will take time before they can turn any others dark. That gives us some time to work out what they’re doing and stop it.”
“It’s pretty obvious what they’re doing. Trying to turn this into a dark, shadowy place. There are a hell of a lot more dead people than live ones. That energy could overpower us.”
“And, infected with hate and rage, everyone would be at war with everyone else. Nobody would know peace.”
“There’s always been fightin’ and war and people trying to kill one ‘nother. ‘S how it is.”
“In isolated incidents and in some countries, yes. But this will be all over the world, Jack. Everywhere.”
“What d’you mean by everywhere?”
How many interpretations of the word were there? “All over the world. I saw the same thing happening in other countries. Natural disasters, war zones, anywhere lots of people have lost their lives. They show up like silver dots and then they blaze for a heartbeat before turning black.” Katie closed her eyes. The visions she had when she was falling continued behind her lids. On every continent, tiny lights were slowly moving, converging in a cluster in what she assumed were the foreign versions of Northwood. She did her best to describe what she saw as she was seeing it. Unfortunately, she couldn’t quite convey the magnitude of this or that this problem might be too big for them to handle. They were all here, in England, how on earth were they meant to change things on the other side of the world?
It is true that we cannot meddle in human affairs. Not in any physical way. That is why we have agents and that is why we have you.
“…but they won’t tell me what to do!” Katie finished off knowing she sounded whiny.
“I think I know.” Dina, pale and red faced from crying, stared at each of them in turn. She reached forward and pushed up the sleeve on her coat. There was a jumper under that covering the thready scars on her wrist. It wasn’t right but it would do for now. “We’re blood. And we need to go home.”
“I don’t think we have half a day to walk there. This is going down right now.”
“Two hours,” Dina suggested and that seemed fair with the amount of time Katie thought it would take the shadow souls to reach the point of no return. But there were no buses, no taxis, and nobody was likely to stop for three teens and an adult trying to thumb a ride. Her gaze lit on the row of motorbikes. “Anyone got a delinquent past?”
As the only one with a past to speak of, suspicion fell on Shimma. He said he could hijack most things – vehicles rarely worked in Northwood so he always found himself ‘borrowing’ rides when he left town.
Somewhere along the way, that lovely little pain switch Katie had found in her head juddered back on and everything hurt. Tingles under her burns and scars got steadily stronger until they were fully blown hurting, somebody jabbing white hot needles into raw tissue. At least the bleeding from her head had stopped. While Shimma had been relieving two of the bikes from their temporary homes, Jack had shown her how to close the wound and then make it disappear. It was all about reaching a calm that felt entirely false, accepting that this body could not get hurt any longer – not the kind of injuries that stuck anyway - and believing it.
“How did you know?” Katie realised the question was a bit random without context. “I mean, how did you know I was a Shade and I could heal myself?”
“You looked different. That isn’t very helpful, I know, but it’s how it was. You were hungry and tired.”
“Mortal feelings. Ghosts don’t have human feelings.
“But Shades do.”
“But I could see other ghosts earlier and I can’t now.”
Jack shrugged. A lost gesture from a boy who’d lived 150 years ago and still didn’t have the answers. It wasn’t right. “Maybe it wasn’t complete ‘til you got hit by that car. They say even ghosts can die by mortal means. Some Shade part of you that handles that stuff got turned off too. With the force.”
“There was nothing normal about me getting hit and runned and then walking away a minute later.”
“We heal fast. We can turn off pain. You’re learnin’ as you go.”
&nbs
p; She had a million more questions but Shimma had started the engine grumbling on the black bike with blue flames, while D had started revving the gold and red one. Neither Jack or Katie could ride one – Jack was glaring at one like he thought it might pounce – so they rode backsies. Katie clasped her arms around Dina’s tiny waist, Shimma looked positively overjoyed at having Jack getting all up close and personal, and then they were off – riding carefully due to the lack of helmets, but going faster than they should have. By just a lot.
A few miles outside the WELCOME TO NORTHWOOD sign, both bikes had glided to a halt for bathroom breaks. That translated to do your business behind the tree break. The girls voted against it since squatting was a little more tricky than point and shoot. Katie folded her arms as she waited for the boys. “Hadn’t you better tell me this plan? Which takes us miles away from where we need to be.”
“The motorway isn’t where we need to be. That’s what we can see happening but that’s not where we stop it. You treat the cause, not the symptom.”
“Dina! There are people dying out there. Go for the symptom!”
“You said it yourself – it takes times for them to replenish their energy. Anyway, if this works, all those – why do you keep looking over your shoulder?”
“No reason.”
“Right.” She didn’t sound as if she believed that for a second. “Is it that Shadow Boy? You’re watching for him.”
“He’s my brother, D, of course he’s going to come for me.”
“Woah. That was unexpected. I never knew you had a brother.”
“I don’t – didn’t.” Katie knew her eyes were shining with tears, could feel the prickle of them burning up her throat, and wiped them away with the heel of her left hand. The flash of pain made her wince. She pushed it aside. Every part that hurt now was a wound she had received when she was alive; they would never disappear like the new cuts. She looked at the sign then up at the stars.
How many scars have they got because of me? How many more before there’s nothing but marks?
She explained quickly how her mother had lost twin boys about five months in to her pregnancy, when Katie had been too young to understand, and now one of them – Daniel – seemed to be stalking her.
“You said they were twins but only one of them came back. What happened to the other one?”
No. Not even entertaining the idea that there was another Daniel on the loose.
The boys came back before the thought had time to take root. They coaxed the bikes to the older part of town, where the infernal machines spluttered and refused to move another inch. “Shouldn’t you tell somebody I’m coming home?” Home. Oddly, the weirdness of this little town was more relaxing than the relative safety of Worth. Maybe she should be worried about how all the chaos and stress had become synonymous with normality.
“Don’t want to spoil the surprise,” Shimma grinned.
“Get down my flank and protect the truck! Shoot to kill!”
A multi-player shooting game flickered on the TV where all the combatants were dressed in black and white camouflage – which was really only camouflage if one was hiding in a field of zebras. Two game controllers snaked out of the games console under the screen. An open pizza box and two beer cans stood between the two white wires.
“Adam, there’s bad guys right there.” Exasperated, Leo turned his gun on the zombie coming up behind them and blew a hole through its chest. It kept coming. “Should’ve gone for the head.”
“You should have been patient. Look, there’re a load more on the way. If we’d waited-!
“We’d be dead by now.”
“I could have taken them all out.”
“With a grenade? And gone down with ‘em? Clever.”
Leo reached forward for his can of lager, drained the last mouthful then rolled it into the pizza box full of crusts and the red onion Adam had picked off. Something about salad ingredients on pizza was just wrong. “Against all laws of man and God,” was his usual statement but it wouldn’t go down well with Leo tonight. He was still feeling Katie’s loss pretty bad, then Jaye had disappeared; this evening needed to be guy-time.
He jabbed the D-pad to make his character run forward, scouting the next part of the game before telling Leo to follow.
“Behind you.”
“Bitch, be quiet,” Leo snapped, having heard the front door unlock and Dina hang up her coat. “I know how to play.”
Beside him, Adam thumbed the pause button on the game and seemed almost frozen in place. The controller fell from his hand and slowly, as if speed might scare his hopes away, he turned his head. Dina stood just inside the living room, tired, dirty, paler than he had ever seen her. Shimma and Jack had taken up perches on the arms of the sofa, looking much the same if not quite as ill. It was mildly worrying but that wasn’t what caught his attention. That honour went to Katie Louise Cartwright: time of death 13.32 Tuesday 19th October. And now it was Thursday the 28th. And she was filling the open doorway. It took only a moment to look her up and down just to make sure that yes, this was the real Katie before he had jumped up and was hugging her, swinging her up and all around like a nice uncle.
She hissed in pain as his hands squeezed a little too tight. “Careful! Walking corpses have feelings too.”
“Sorry. Jesus, I’m sorry. I just want to make sure you’re all right.”
“There are things called questions…”
“It’s really you.” Katie shrugged. She couldn’t think of who else she would be. “But how? I mean, I didn’t think – none of us thought – you were coming back.”
“It’s a long story.” Dina pried him away, took Katie by the hand and sat her down. “And not a hugely interesting one so-“
“I got hit by a speeding car.”
“Okay, some of it’s interesting. And we’ll get round to it in time. Which,” she looked down at her watch then over at Shimma for an answering nod, “we don’t have much of.”
“The deal runs out at midnight. Less than three hours.” The eldest man of the group reached down for a pizza crust and began to chew on it thoughtfully. “It should be enough.”
All of a sudden, there was a flurry of activity as Leo stood up and stalked out of the room with thunder in his face. Footsteps ran up the stairs and a door slammed so hard it more than likely had a crack running all the way around it. “He’s pleased to see me. No idea I was so popular.” Sarcasm dripped off every syllable but Katie was too pre-occupied to care how she sounded.
“He’s got a problem with, you know, you,” said Adam. AKA Captain States The Obvious. “Nobody expected you back. Just give him some time.”
“No.” Katie twirled a lock of brown hair around her index finger. Dried blood dust came of and sprinkled her dress. “It’s more than that. I’ll talk to him. Soon.”
Adam reached over for the remote and turned the TV off. When she caught sight of the old Superman tattoo on his left bicep – in almost the exact same place as the whiplash on his right – she had a flash memory of him as he had been a fortnight ago. He and the house mother, his wife in all but jewellery, Lainy, had had a row about her return to work and he’d looked sick. Then there had been that unexplained absence last week (God, it seemed like a lifetime ago at least) and the tests Dr de Rossa had been so eager for Lainy to have and wouldn’t tell her about. It all had to be something wrong with Adam… “What about you? Are you okay?”
He moved across the room and sat on the other side of her, turning so he could ease the twist of hair that had turned her finger completely white. Putting a finger under her chin, he tilted her face up and searched Katie’s eyes deeply as though something in them would tell him she was all a lie. “Jesus, you have no clue how much better I am now. Yes, I’m fine. I was never the one to worry about. So.” He released her then sat back so he could see the filthy trio Katie had brought home with her. “Have you got time
to get cleaned up? I just vacuumed.”
“No.” Short and sweet. Dina must hold the world record for saying so much in one tiny word. It carried with it hints of a thousand reasons why they didn’t have washing time. “At midnight tonight, these two get busted down to human. Like us, she added to Adam. Her own gaze hadn’t risen from the floor yet but now it went to her broken nails. She pulled a nail file from the drawer in the coffee table and started to file down the edges as she spoke. “These two are crazy, you realise. I mean, I know I have mental health issues but these are completely. Fucking. Insane.”
Katie stretched behind Dina and grabbed for Jack.
“Do you know the Keepers are going to turn Jack mortal at midnight? And then they’re going to punish Shimma by stripping him of his powers. Apparently, they both did a deal today so they could come and help us. This one was trapped in the Dead World – sounds horrible – and they blocked the city limits to Shimma.”
“You’re… you’re going to be normal? Not normal but… living and dying mortal?”
“And I’d give up that life too if I thought it would help.”
Katie choked on a sob.
“There are people dying out there. Souls being damned. And we have to restore them before midnight while we still have some power. So, no, we really can’t stop to wash up.” D paused. “Plus one of the Evil Twins is after her.”
“Oh.”
Five minutes later Katie was standing in front of the bathroom mirror and wondering where her life had taken such a wrong turn. Eight weeks ago, she had left her home town behind, assuming she would leave all the bad things behind too. Levenson Academy of Sport and Action had offered her early admission so she could get the proper training to further her cross country running career and diversify to track and full on road races. Once she was here though, the trouble had started in earnest and now she stood here decorated in scars and burns from bad dreams, bad men and bad decisions. There would be more scars if some-one had not spirited them all away. The Keepers? Would they be that kind? As she washed the worst of the grime away, Katie silently thanked Dina for saying she had an hour to wash, change and get ready for…well, she had not said yet. “Prepare for pain,” had been the general idea. And that sounded scary enough. Her own thoughts were making this worse though. How did you prepare for pain exactly? Short of flak jackets and bulletproof forcefields – both of which the house was alarmingly low on. Dina had taken Shimma and a protesting Jack – who said he should stay here in case Shadow Boy had followed them here – out of the house saying they had important things to do first and made Katie promise to be at Shimma’s club by ten forty five at the latest. So, like a good girl, she had vowed to be there on time. But there was just under an hour to kill before then and she did not know quite what to do with it. She looked longingly at the bath tub but no, the hot water would only make her even more sleepy and falling to sleep now was not an option because a five minute doze could easily turn into five hours. Besides, last time she had had a bath, it hadn’t ended brilliantly. Nearly drowning not brilliantly. So bed was out of the question too. There was no question of going back downstairs just to get involved in a conversation with Adam which would consist of him asking questions she could not answer. What did that leave?
Her spare hairbrush was where she had left it ten days ago on the top of the towel rack. Katie ran the bristles under the cold tap and used it to scrub the worst of the blood out of her hair. Weird that there was nothing there now - no bump or scab - it was as though the blood had appeared from nowhere. That done, she found her orange toothbrush and cleaned her teeth until her mouth tasted of mint and not week old morning breath. Still, that only wasted ten minutes.
Fish.
If anybody had bothered to look after Bobby Fish and feed him, Katie ought to go and check.
The fishbowl was no longer on her chest of drawers where it usually was. It hadn’t been in the living room either. Most of the housemates spent a lot of time in the kitchen; he was probably down there, swimming in lovely little circles, completely oblivious to the chaos the bipeds were causing. Too tired to go and investigate, Katie sat on the edge of her bed and contemplated her wardrobe. She got as far as sliding her long legs into some pale blue jeans and laying a long-sleeved t-shirt on the bed. The dirty and frayed tennis dress hung over her jeans to her thighs. Swapping it for the clean top was too much like hard work. That little pain switch seemed to be jammed; every muscle was in rebellion and every nerve was tipped with fire. Everything hurt. It took a force of will just to pry her eyes back open after every blink. Caffeine – caffeine and sugar would fix everything, for a little while at least. The stash of Red Bull was still tucked under her desk where it had been left… although there seemed like there were a few less cans, and the Doritos bag was empty and crumpled. Even her books seemed in different orders, though it was pretty hard to be absolutely sure in the familiar chaos. But it was still hers. Her space.
Katie popped the tab on a can and sipped it in between pulling on a pair of baseball boots, waiting for the energy drink to work its magic. Pain began to fade out around the edges as she busied herself with mundane tasks like tidying her bedroom a little. Brushing old papers into her top desk drawer, Katie found herself picking up a creamy envelope and sitting down with it. It was a letter from the Worth Police Service informing her that they were no longer treating her rape as an active investigation. Insufficient evidence they called it. A shadow fell across the dimly lit room. Immediately, Katie thought that Daniel had come to take her out before she could interfere with his plans any more. But why would he do that? Daniel was her little brother for God’s sake! He couldn’t want to hurt her, surely.
“What are you doing here?”
Ahh. Leo. Not really a great substitute but beggars couldn’t be choosers. “It’s my room.”
“Katie, don’t- is something wrong?”
“No,” she lied. Lied because everything was wrong; nothing was how it was meant to be. Instead she held up the envelope. Leo recognised it for what it was and his tense shoulders softened a little. Her attack earlier in the year was no longer a secret in the house but it was not something she wanted to shout from the rooftops. “When I moved here, they said they were dropping the case. Couldn’t find the guy, didn’t have enough evidence to look for him, whatever. But today… yesterday even… I saw him. I didn’t recognise him – the whole thing is still a blur – but I sort of possessed him and I felt his darkness. I felt dirty for hours. It was like he was a good man on the outside but there was depravity, cruelty on the inside. Urgh,” she shuddered at the memory and couldn’t stop herself flinching away when Leo put a hand on her knee. He moved a second later, moved back to the other side of the tiny room – about five steps – clearly uncomfortable with their closeness. “You can stay sitting by me if you want.”
Leo inched closer and balanced on the edge of the desk. He had never been much good at comforting people and social interaction was less than a strong point for him. Besides, the things that had happened between them in the last few days of her life made things really awkward. There were so many things both of them should say, needed to say, but neither of them could find the right words.
“You’re not real,” Leo finally said. How could she be real when he had watched her die, heard her begging them to let her go. Not when he had seen the ambulance take her to the hospital with no blues and twos flashing and screaming: no urgency. As far as the paramedics were concerned she had been dead at the scene and unequivocally gone by the time the doctors had got their hands on her. He had even been to the memorial service held for her immediate family and Northwood friends. That was it, right? That was the end.
Katie stood up and unpinned something from her wall. Dina had told her to bring the crystal and one remaining tarot card that Mademoiselle Romani had given her. She was to wear something silver too; her jewellery collectio
n was meagre to say the least, but there was a ring her Gran had given her for her last birthday. Sixteen. Technically, I’m going to be sixteen for the rest of my life. Even if she got older, Shades rooted in this world were susceptible to all the natural afflictions that came with getting older all the way down to wrinkles and saggy boobs. “I assure you I am -“
A tornado of air and darkness rushed into the room. Katie threw her hands up to protect her eyes and flattened herself against the wall. The door slammed, locking her in with Leo – who could get hurt and not recover with a thought – and…
“Daniel?”
A figure rose up out of the thick black fog and Shadow Boy stood in front of her.
“Did you follow me here?”
Daniel groaned a reminder that he did not know any words other than the few he had spoken to her. Soon you will remember me.
Right now, though, he didn’t look as he had just a handful of hours ago. Still, the strange black shadows moved over him but they weren’t as thick, weren’t as dark or dangerous. And the shaded brown eyes that had told her the truth were clear and deep and nothing but desperation hid in them. This was the brother she had always been meant to have. Whatever had been forcing him to do all those terrible things was gone now. It might come back at any moment, though, the scared child-like face turned to hers was proof enough. His skin was so white that it was grey, and it was lined. Child’s skin should be smooth, maybe a zit or two, blemishes, but not etched with such deep worry lines or stretched this tight. Katie took half a precious second to run a hand over her own face. Cool, damp, scarred. Child’s skin should not feel like that either.
“You know this freak?” spat Leo. “Another one of your lost causes, I suppose.”
“What happened to I’m a Christian. We help everyone.”
A hard look shut his mouth to whatever nasty comment he had brewing.
You remember me. Katie swallowed, nodded. Katie. Remember Katie. He wasn’t telling her to remember any more. He was telling himself to remember her. Or maybe that he always had remembered her.
Daniel held his hands clasped before him in agitated silence, shifting from one foot to the other. Waiting for something.
“Somebody needs to say it. Time’s ticking away and this dude’s just wasting it.”
“He’s not wasting time, Leo. He’s my brother and he was hurting people. But he’s here now –“ different, “and I trust him.” Katie ignored the questions that spilled out of his mouth – they were the same ones Dina had begun to ask on the journey home and she would tell the whole story when everyone was back together. “What’s wrong?” Stupid. Daniel had no way of answering. However, the look he gave her was so full of pleading and despair that there was absolutely no way she could not act on it. Something was deeply, deeply wrong. Something only Katie could fix, otherwise why would this boy of her buried memories have come here? Wordlessly, a mini backpack was filled with her card, crystal, phone and a hair scrunchie. Her hair was greasy and frizzy around her face: if she got out of this in one piece, it was all coming off and going into the chin-length style Jaye and Dina shared. There were already a few things in there that she couldn’t be bothered to fish out: broken pen, Dads penknife, playing cards. Wow, I collect some serious junk! As an afterthought, thinking about the woman in the car with her good luck troll, she grabbed a necklace off the desk – a loop of suede cord with ANGEL in lettered beads, her personal lucky charm – and dropped it over herself. “I’m ready.” What she was ready for was a mystery but, with a sudden surge of adrenaline, Katie wasn’t sure if there was anything she couldn’t face.
She stepped forward and tightened the bag straps on her shoulders. Everything seemed better – less overwhelming – when you had a bag on your back. “Are we going somewhere? It’s okay if you can’t say. I know you need to take me somewhere and I trust you.”
“It’s past ten o’clock. Dina said to be at the club at a quarter to eleven.”
“You were listening?”
Leo shrugged. He wasn’t going to say or do anything that might earn him brownie points. It was the expectations he couldn’t handle, the expectation to start being kind and helpful all the time. “Don’t give a crap if you trust him, I don’t. An’ I’m not letting you go anywhere with him. Not on your own.”
All the protests were whipped away when he advanced on her, took one hand in his and let the shadowy young boy sandwich them between his.
And then they were spinning, flying, through a star-shot night sky. It was so much more exhilarating than the flight-by-Keepers she had experienced before now, and it took a great force of will not to scream and whoop in delight.
This wasn’t scary in the tiniest part. The sense of speed was numbing, not seeing where she was going was disorienting. It was amazing. Katie fixed her eyes on Leo and discovered that her hands were clamped on his shoulders, his on hers. She should have pulled back but she didn’t. Didn’t even consider it. He had never looked so young or carefree. To take this moment from him would be a disaster. He pinned her wildly roving eyes with his own. The darkest blue on the spectrum and full of tiny, almost invisible flecks of gold. Each eye was a dying galaxy and Katie drifted closer, trying to see further, make out planets, suns, stars. All she saw, in the end, was her own eyes reflected back. Endless, muddy brown, hard.
Katie moved until she was flying by his side, her left hand gripping tightly to his right, her head thrown back. The briefest laugh escaped her and rang on the stars. Her companion joined in. They spent seconds, minutes, hours, smiling at the sky and not even knowing quite why. The infinite sky seemed to be made just for the two of them tonight. A pang of… guilt? Because it should have been Jack sharing in the magic, Jack holding her tight in case she fell. But he wasn’t here. Not for the first time, he was somewhere else when she needed him. Okay, there were more important things, and Jack no doubt had concerns of his own but it didn’t stop it hurting. The two shared a smile, pure and untouched by what ifs or buts.
Then the falling started and Leo pulled her against him. Katie didn’t much enjoy it but she was used to having her stomach in her throat. Eyes closed now, she felt rather than heard a voice mumble into her hair “I’m scared.”
When Katie felt solid ground beneath her feet, all memory of that night-time confession vanished.
They were in the corridor of her nightmares.
A long, narrow corridor that stretched further than she could see. The place was such a brilliant white that it needed no artificial light to illuminate it; the walls took care of that. Even so, there were square windows set deep into roughly a foot of brick or stone, at about waist height and at regular intervals of a couple of metres. They let in a kind of dull grey light, the kind a cloud might emit if it could. The floor seemed to be tile but it was shiny and cold-looking like marble. At the eventual end of this walkway would be a T junction. Both directions were another long corridor of white and windows. At the end of that was a door which could be pushed open and you thought you could close it, maybe take a moment to breathe, put some distance between you and the monsters. But the second you straightened up, they would be right behind you and the rest of eternity was running, running, running away in endless circles, down endless halls, slamming through identical doors without ever getting further away. Without ever knowing if there was a way out. It was a common nightmare. Only this one was different. She was awake for this one.
Nor was Katie running from monsters.
No, this time, she was sure, she was running towards them.
At least she had Leo at her back.
“What now?” he asked. An 18 year old man was asking orders of a 16 year old girl. And that was… weirdly, it was okay.
“Now,” said Katie, hoiking her bag further up and twisting her hair into the scruffiest ponytail imaginable. “Now we walk down into the belly of the beast.”
“Be
ast?”
“I’m pretty sure you can’t get out of here without help. And we won’t get that if we don’t find out what’s down there and, given my track record, it is going to be intense and, more than likely, evil.”
“So we just toddle off down this hall without a clue what’s on the other end.”
“Well, it probably won’t be this one. It might take a while.” Long enough for the pair of them to get nice and freaked out, worrying about what they might find. Katie suddenly remembered. She looked around wildly for Daniel. A figure all of moving black would stand out like a demon among angels against all this white. But he was nowhere to be seen. Perhaps this was a place he couldn’t/wouldn’t go. Maybe he had already gone ahead of them or done the sensible thing and run in the opposite direction. Three options were all Katie would allow herself to consider because the (answer) only other alternative was too horrible to even contemplate… That she had been lured here. Why? What possible use could she be? Questions were a luxury neither of them had time for right now. Her brain went into shutdown and her feet were carrying her down the tunnel before she realised Leo was walking beside her and speaking in a panic-tinged whisper.
“… without weapons?”
“We have a weapon. We have me.”
Surprisingly, the end of their journey came fast. The corridor ended in a flat white door with no internal window. Until now, Katie had not given much thought to how useful it was to be able to see what was in front of you. Even when there was nothing but danger and the promise of pain barrelling towards a person, people always liked to know what was coming.
“Err…. Katie?”
“Wait! If there’s-“
“Watch.” Leo grabbed the collar of her top and twisted her around until her back was turned to the door, just inches away but close enough to feel the chill bouncing off it.
Katie frowned and shook herself free of him. Then she looked back down the way they had come. The bight corridor was disappearing. Not blinking out of existence or falling away or anything so dramatic. It was just dissolving: white faded into the inky midnight blue and then… and then it just wasn’t there any more. And the magical vanishing act crept further along the corridor, taking out inch after inch of white stone. It kept coming closer and, at four feet away, it wasn’t so magical. Blindly, she grabbed for Leo, caught a fistful of his hoodie and pulled him back, away from the menacing empty night. It edged closer and closer and they shuffled further and further back. There was the slimmest of chances that the floor was still there, albeit invisible; that the universe was just screwing with them… Katie wasn’t about to take that chance. Another section of the white hall faded into midnight blue and the pair were touching the cool door with their backs, the tiny weight of resistance behind it. The dissolving floor progressed. Pressed as flat into the door as possible, there was nowhere left for them to go except down. Nothing left to do but wait.
“Locked,” said Leo. She hadn’t even seen him move to check the door.
Nowhere left to go…
Nothing left to do…
His arm tensed under her hand. Reading that sudden tension as TROUBLE with a capital TROUBLE, Katie squashed her own panic down and opened all the senses she had closed off.
Screaming.
Faint and weak but unmistakeable. It was the heart-rending sound of somebody being tortured and tormented. And it was coming from the other side of the door. Somebody was being horribly abused behind this locked door and she wanted to go in! Why did she want that? That was insane. And yet… wasn’t the unknown better than the end you knew was coming?
With a snick, the door unlocked and swung open under the combined weight of Katie and Leo, sending them both tumbling through and down to the floor. On the way down, Leo put himself so he would hit the ground first and he could cushion her fall. So not happening. All knowledge that the fall didn’t have to hurt flew out of Katie’s head and Adam’s training kicked in. He had taught her how to fall properly. She was just twisting herself into the right position when the stone floor reared up and smacked her in the face. A pitiful laugh touched her ears.
“Katie!” Leo hauled her up. “Where are we?”
She limped over to the door, which had swung shut behind them, and felt for a handle to pull on. When she found none, Katie put her shoulder to it and pushed. Definitely locked. One way in – no way out. Fabulous. She leaned against it while she got her breath and balance and rooted through her little bag. “Sorry. I haven’t got a map. How the crap should I know where we are!?”
“Because it was your idea to follow the mute assassin.”
Good point.
“Come on. We better take a look and see if we can find who-ever was screaming.”
“Are you a rabbit?”
“What?”
“Are. You. A. Rabbit? Maybe you ate a whole field of carrots when you went home.”
“You’re not making any sense, Leo. The stress is getting to you, isn’t it?”
Well, he wasn’t about to deny this wasn’t exactly beer-and-video-games relaxing. In fact, he was so busy not denying it that he missed the pathetic excuse for a laugh that came a second later. Katie and her new razor sharp Shade senses didn’t though. It was so exhausted, that sound, and this place felt so big, that it just got lost in the air.
Implacable.
I won’t give up until I find you.
She sent the promise out through her thoughts, as loud and strong as possible.
“Earth calling. Or… where-ever we are. I can’t see anything past my nose.”
“What do you mean? I can see fine.”
“Night vision must be one of your superpowers then.”
Katie looked around her. Black walls ringed a large chilled room. It was probably larger than the entire athletics stadium back at the academy. A tiny slit under the door let in the dark light that had swallowed the corridor. There were torches – the medieval kind you lit and burned – along the far wall, but not one of them were in use. If this was the stadium then they were floodlights nobody had turned on yet. Thinking about it like that made it a bit less freaksome.
“We don’t have- never mind. Here, there’s a light on it somewhere.” Katie scrolled through the apps on her phone until she found the right one, turned it to maximum and handed it across.
Pure white light washed the room in a pale glow that reminded Katie, uncomfortably, of wandering through clouds and energy to reach the Keepers. She shivered.
“Cold?”
“Actually, no.” Although the temperature in the room was barely in double figures. “This place… it’s like a basement in a horror flick. Where the stupid blonde hides from the guy with the knife.”
“Neither of us are blonde and one of us ain’t that dumb.”
Chapter thirteen