Ancient Echoes

  He walked away from her, picking out the path with the torch.

  ‘Catch me, Daddy.’

  ‘You just be careful!’ he called back, but simple parental fear, uncertainty at his own strategy, made him glance back.

  The girl was hanging from the branch by one hand, her body swinging, the white nightgown billowing about feet that twisted as if searching for a grip. She was watching him and smiling, face pale in the broad flood of the torch.

  ‘Catch me, Daddy.’

  And dropped.

  Screaming her name, Jack launched himself back towards the tree, aware that she had twisted in the air, nightdress flapping, legs swinging up so that she would strike the ground backside first. But he had gone no more than four paces when the city rose before him, emerging from the earth at an angle across him, flowing about him, bringing with it the smell of old, cold stone and damp cellars.

  It shimmered: he was there again, at the entrance to the cave, the Shimmering that would lead him to the heart of the ghost city. Natalie was not in sight. Wherever she had fallen, she was outside of his sphere of consciousness, and though he struck forward, beating hands against the rough-hewn stone at the entrance to the cave system, all he heard was the echo of his own despair … and the distant sound of water.

  ‘Natalie …’

  Somewhere here, right here, the child would have struck the ground. Was she broken? Had her spine snapped with the fall? A broken arm? He tried to feel through the new reality of Glanum, but the woods above Stinhall had gone, now, and ahead of him a voice called his name.

  He emerged from the cave into the grey gloom of the shrine-city and faced the tall, white scaled woman who stood before him. The scales, he realized, were part of her tunic, slivers of white bone and shells made into armour, covering her from neck to mid-thigh, hugging the narrow contours of her body. Long, fair hair flowed about a face as lean and elfin as any classical picture of the faery world, whose documentation in paint and puppet was the lifeblood of his friends in Stinhall. Eyes that glittered with amusement stared through the unruly fringe. A mouth, wide with anticipation, mocked a kiss, then a hand was raised, beckoning.

  ‘Come on, Daddy. We have a long way to go …’

  ‘Natalie?’

  ‘Shade, you old fool. Don’t you recognize me? Perhaps you don’t. It’s been a long time. Daddy’s girl has grown.’

  ‘Shade …?’

  ‘Come on!’

  He was drawn to her

  ‘No!’

  He turned and ran back through the cave system. Behind him, Shade followed, shrieking and laughing, he couldn’t tell whether with amusement or fury; this ghost of his daughter was a harpy he couldn’t and wouldn’t fathom.

  He was suddenly on the moonlit hillside, and he stumbled forwards towards the glow of light from Stinhall. Behind him, a woman shrilled her anger. He turned quickly, searching the illusory cave and the towering monoliths for a sign of his daughter, the tree-falling daughter (he was aware that he trusted to Natalie’s natural, youthful litheness to have turned the fall into a perfect landing) but seeing nothing – ran.

  Shade drifted after him, cooing and calling, white scales reflecting the moon.

  Behind Shade, Glanum pursed its cavernous mouth, stretching for the sucking kiss, following him down the hill.

  Angela was waiting for him at the bottom of the garden.

  ‘Where is she? Where’s Nattie?’

  ‘Get into the house!’

  ‘Where’s my daughter?’

  Jack turned. The Shimmering was flowing towards him, widening, will-o’-the-wisp shaping the entrance to the cave White Shade walking ahead of it, lean and beautiful, reaching for her father.

  ‘Get into the house!’

  ‘Is she still in the woods?’

  ‘She’s safe!’

  He tugged at Angela’s coat but she twisted away. ‘Safe? You’re mad! I didn’t expect you to leave her.’

  As Angela vanished across the bridge to the field beyond, Jack ran back across the turf maze, past the barbecue pit, towards the welcoming light of the kitchen.

  Wendy stepped out to meet him, looking past him to the high woods. She was very calm, almost serene, her bright gaze fixed on something in the far distance.

  ‘Who is that?’

  For a moment Jack was too confused to think, but then he realized that Wendy could see the approaching shade.

  ‘The ghost of my daughter.’

  ‘She’s beautiful.’

  ‘She’s just a ghost.’

  ‘I know. She’s still very beautiful.’

  ‘I’m in trouble, Wendy …’

  ‘Indeed you are. Go inside the house. I’ll try and talk to her …’

  Wendy walked towards the glowing mouth of the cave, turning once to signal, ‘Go in! Go in!’ then crossed the maze and the lawn to face the spectral figure at the bottom of the field. Angela was lost in darkness, calling for Natalie up by the woods.

  In the kitchen, Brian asked quite simply, ‘Where’s she going?’

  ‘To talk to the woman. The ghost woman …’

  ‘You shouldn’t be doing this,’ Brian said quietly, angrily. His eyes were fierce, covering the fact that he was terrified for his wife.

  ‘I’m sorry. But she seems to know what she’s doing.’

  Of course! Neither Brian nor Angela could see the Shimmering. Only Wendy, always more highly attuned to the oddities and so-called energies of the natural landscape, could get a partial idea of what was pursuing her friend.

  A moment later, the kitchen door was flung open and Wendy, dishevelled, her night clothes torn, burst into the kitchen, slamming the door behind her, leaning against it as she looked at Jack.

  ‘What a bitch! Oh Jesus, what a bitch!’

  The house shuddered. A puppet fell from the gallery on the open landing. The glasses by the sink rattled.

  ‘I think we’d better get the hell out of here,’ Wendy said. ‘Sorry, Jack. Brian and I have charms …’

  ‘We need the charms?’ Brian looked even more alarmed.

  ‘We need something! That’s no ghost out there. You’re on your own, Jack. You should have warned us.’

  She fled through the house. Brian picked up the puppet, a four-foot high representation of a troll, then grabbed a knife from the table.

  ‘We’ll be under the bed at the back of the house,’ he said with a wry laugh. ‘What have you brought with you, Jack? Not termites, I think.’

  ‘I didn’t know it would follow.’

  ‘You’d better take care of Natalie. Christ!’

  The house trembled. Jars of dried beans and grains fell and smashed onto the flagstone floor.

  The scaled woman was walking towards the light in the kitchen, shaking her head as she smiled, a parent approaching a misbehaving child. Behind her the night seemed to fold into the shimmering shape of the cave.

  Jack withdrew into the sitting room, pressed himself against the stone wall by the small garden window. The wide fireplace glowed and crackled with the great log that burned there. The light of the flames cast shadows of statues and furniture about the walls. Toby’s toys lay scattered where he and Natalie had played during the evening. The tall Regency clock by the door whirred and chimed.

  Shade entered the room, drifting effortlessly through the stone. The cave mouth opened towards him, rank carved rock and gloomy entrance framed with eerie green light, flowing through the walls and open fire, bearing down upon the cowering man.

  Glanum had come to fetch him again, and resigning himself, he stepped forward towards the log fire and the Shimmering, feeling cold and dampness wrap about him like the touch of hell.

  30

  White Shade was impatient with him. He was so slow, running and walking behind her as she led the way through the shadow city. Her frustration, her impetuosity, reminded him of Angela, as did her relentless drive forward, her constant reiteration of the need to get ahead, to get to the ‘pool’.

  Where
’s the pool?’

  ‘You remember! The well, the sanctuary where the women bathe and their dogs drink. The hunting spring. We hid there. Come on, Jack. You’re not an old man. Run faster.’

  Jack?

  She was framed, slim and palely gleaming, between walls that crowded into him, a morbid place, its stones dripping anguish.

  ‘I’m frightened. Everything’s closing in–’

  ‘Then run a little faster!’

  ‘Where are we?’

  ‘Don’t you recognize it?’

  ‘No I don’t! Where are we …?’

  She looked quickly round and he thought she was shivering, uncomfortable for the moment. ‘This is where they burned the bodies. They brought them here, some still alive, and burned them with pitch, and dry wood, and straw, and the blankets and clothes from their houses. They bundled them into the alley, because the stone walls stopped the fire spreading. And the fleas couldn’t leap above them.’

  ‘The plague?’

  ‘Yes. The plague. And its victims. Hundreds, Jack. Exburgh has a very chequered history when it comes to human rights.’

  ‘This is Exburgh?’

  ‘This is Glanum, Jack. Glanum feeds on other cities, gorges on their shadows. You know that, don’t you? Now come on!’

  She was running again, emerging from the claustrophobia of the plague road to a plaza, where the rotting trunks of trees were formed into scaffolds and lean, black dogs rooted and fought as they prowled the square.

  They came to the river again, where the hulks of the barges lay half-submerged in sludgy water, masts snapped and fallen, gaily-coloured trappings and sails now fire-blackened, or faded with time. Shade trod carefully, dancing over the crumbling decks among the ruins of the jubilee, crossing to the farther bank. Jack followed, stumbling, aware that the pile of yellowed wood that shattered as he fell was the rain-eroded remnant of a man.

  Shade laughed. She seemed so at home here, a bright presence in the monstrous gloom.

  He called to her.

  ‘Last time I crossed this river, there was a party. It was so alive. It was a happy place. Debauched; delightful; an ancient wedding!’

  ‘Digested, now,’ she said with a chuckle. ‘Digested and excreted. Glanum feeds on every sort of energy, every sort of mood. This is the rubbish dump! Come on, Jack. Keep to the road!’

  He followed her between the bulging, grinning features of beasts, each shaped in smooth, black marble, each marking a monolithic tomb lining the wide road that led to a white building fronted by colonnades and topped with the stretching, winged forms of women.

  Was that the Moon pool? If so, it had been substantially extended since he had last staggered into its cool, refreshing depths. But Shade skirted the place, hugging shadows, alleyways and the slippery banks of the streams which wound through the city.

  At last she ducked into an entrance that was familiar to him. The steps were slick; he could see Shade below him, her image in the water broken and shining as she crouched above the pool, splashing the liquid on her face and neck. Carefully, Jack came down to join her. The whole place smelled dank; wet growth draped the stone faces of the women through whose mouths the spring water dripped.

  But the pool itself was fresh and welcome. In the darkness, only the faint luminescence of the moon on Shade’s dress of shells allowed his sight to adjust to the surroundings.

  ‘What happens now?’ he asked his daughter.

  ‘We wait for my friends,’ she said. ‘Baalgor doesn’t like them. He sent me to fetch you. I think he means to kill you. But that’s not what I want. With my friends around you’ll be safer than the last time.’

  Confused, struggling to remember the previous experience of the Shimmering, Jack simply shook his head. ‘I thought you were Baalgor’s friend,’ he said. ‘I thought you’d do anything for him.’

  ‘Jack, I’ve grown. Can’t you see? Sometimes I go back to Nattie, I creep in beside her, we lie there together in the darkness and dream the same dreams. When she gets up to go to school I run along with her. It’s funny to be there and here, to be young and old. I left Baalgor a long time ago, to hunt with the other women. But he catches me sometimes, and he’s very strong. I know he can take the life from me, just as he’s taking it from Natalie. I know he can take back from me what he’s stripped from the girl. He can even give it back to her if he wants …’

  ‘How?’

  She ignored him. ‘But Jack … I like being me. I like it here. I like the double dream, being with Nattie. She’s part of my life.’

  ‘She could be all of your life, the life you’ve not known. She’s still growing up.’

  ‘I grew up, Jack!’ the woman said tersely. ‘Baalgor saw to that.’

  He didn’t want to think about her words. ‘It’s not the same. Shade … Natalie … if you abandon him completely, we can start again. Get out of Glanum!’

  ‘It’s not the same,’ the white shade echoed sadly. ‘But I can’t abandon him. What he’s done to me, to your daughter, can’t be undone.’

  ‘You just said he could give back what he’d taken!’

  What HAD he taken? Natalie still seemed so normal … except when she was ‘possessed’. What had he taken? Why weren’t the scars visible?

  ‘Some of it. Maybe. I don’t know, Jack. I just know I’ve moved away from him, safely away; but he’s still close, so I take no chances. I’ll do some of what he tells me, his carrying and fetching. But I won’t let him hurt me any more. And I won’t let him hurt you.’

  He stared at her in the faint light, seeing Angela, seeing his daughter, seeing a young, courageous woman who belonged in two worlds. Like her father himself, in fact; torn between realms, increasingly at home in both.

  ‘What do I do for the best?’ he whispered, suddenly over-whelmed by fear.

  ‘The best for what? For who?’

  ‘For whom,’ he corrected, and the shade laughed, echoing, exaggeratedly, ‘for whom’.

  ‘Got to get the language right,’ he murmured.

  ‘Got to get the language right,’ she repeated affectionately, then went on, ‘You want things the way they were. Too late. You want to keep things the way they are. You want this? You want the torment? Baalgor won’t get any easier. He’s a lost man, Jack. Without his Greenfaced sisterwife, he’s slowly crumbling. You have to get them back together: her to him; or him to her.’

  ‘And how do I do that?’

  ‘How do I know? I’m your daughter’s shadow, Jack. And I’m Shade. This is my world and all I know about it is what I see; Baalgor didn’t talk to me about the centre of the city. What-ever’s there, though, that’s what he fears; that’s where you have to take him. He lives in its shadow, but he’s hiding from it. And that’s where you have to drag him. And his green-faced partner. The centre of the city. It’s what drives Glanum across the earth. It’s what makes Glanum feed on the shadows of forgotten towns. It’s what drives everything!’

  The pool bubbled, water splashing suddenly onto the lower steps.

  ‘Here they come,’ Shade said. ‘Don’t be frightened.’

  Even as she spoke the words, the surface of the water erupted. Four mastiffs, monstrous beasts, saturated and panting for air, came bounding from the well and onto the stone steps, shaking water from their stinking, matted fur. They turned to sniff and growl at the hunched man who crouched in their sanctuary.

  One of them reared up, eight feet high, staring nervously at the intruder. A second lapped at his face, a deep rumble in its throat. Shade slapped at them. ‘He’s a friend. Easy … Easy!’

  The dogs padded up the steps and three of them slipped away into a side passage. The fourth, its face speckled with white which caught the pale moon, crouched tensely at the top of the stairs, fixing Jack with its gaze.

  White faces surfaced in the pool, staring through the water, almost dreamlike. The four women emerged in quick succession, throwing weapons to the hard floor, wringing out their hair, gasping for breath. One was ve
ry old, grey-haired, grey-tunicked. Another was no older than Shade, but her face was ridged with scars, or disease, it was hard to see in this faint illumination. The other two were mature and menacing, one wearing silver torques and belt over a leather tunic and sandalled feet, the other in shell armour, similar to Shade’s, her hair cropped to the skull, a string of shell or bone fragments draped across her face, hanging from each ear, threaded through her nose.

  This one hauled a rope from the pool. She, and the older woman, tugged for a few seconds and an animal, trussed and dead, was dragged into the sanctuary. Jack smelled the blood from its wounds.

  Deeper in the place, the three dogs began to howl. The mastiff on the steps just growled in its throat, still watching the man it didn’t know.

  ‘This is my father,’ Shade said, and the older and younger women laughed. Shade went on, ‘He answers to the name of Jack. Jack? My friends have no particular names. They were eaten by Glanum much like everything else you’ll find in the city. But the old woman scowls whenever you call her Sefonnie.’

  ‘Sefonnie? Persephone?’

  As he spoke the name, the old woman spat at him. She was gathering her arrows together where they’d scattered on her emergence from the pool.

  ‘And this is Hekut,’ Shade went on, waving towards decorated-with-shells, ‘Nubissa,’ the other woman, ‘And Diana,’ the girl.

  ‘You certainly know how to pick your friends,’ Jack said. ‘Straight out of the wolf pack!’

  ‘They’re good hunters. In Glanum, you need to be. If you can’t hunt, if you can’t run, if you can’t hide, you soon end up at the river-gate, grinning at ravens.’

  ‘Does that mean “dead”?’

  Shade laughed delightedly. ‘It doesn’t mean “making love”.’

  The women had moved away from the water, ducking into the passages, and now Shade led her father into a drier place within the Sanctuary, a small cell made warm with mats and candles. The dogs were eating, and from another place came the sounds of voices, laughter and butchery. After a while, Hekut ducked into the cell, glancing with a frown at Jack, and put down a clay bowl of cooked liver and tripes. Shade used her fingers to feed on the steaming offal, and when Jack satisfied his own hunger he found the simple meal surprisingly palatable.