‘We should have a funeral for Uri.’
‘You’re right.’ Her laugh was bright as spring water. ‘A cremation. Luna couldn’t keep still underground.’
Suddenly Beech paused. ‘I was buried in the ground and they dug me up. Someone stole my body from the grave, and then they made me live again. That’s illegal, isn’t it?’
Paul began to respond to the question but Beech clapped her hands loudly. ‘Listen. Attention please. We have work to do, ladies and monstermen. Uri must have a funeral. I say we cremate his body on the cliff. What do you all say?’
The God Scarers signalled their agreement by applauding. Saiban would probably dissent. Paul noticed, however, that he’d vanished from the Monsters’ Ball.
‘It was the custom in my country,’ Beech told them. ‘To kiss the body before dispatch of mortal remains.’ She waved at the trestle table where Uri lay, then downed another gulp of the quaintly named coffin paint. ‘The custom is called Kissing the Corpse. Who wants to go first?’
On the walkway the cold night air roused Elsa. She recalled the wild party. She must have downed a couple of pints of that potent liquor. All she could hear now was the moan of the breeze around the towers. Confused nightmare images splashed through her mind. When she’d begun drinking the evil-tasting stuff coloured lights had sprung from the furniture. She’d experienced hallucinations: The songs of the ancient dead, calling her. Luna pursuing her on to the castle walls. Then attacking her. If I’d imagined it then why is my neck so sore? She tried to move her arms. For some reason they were restrained. The sense of now struck her with the force of a fist. Suddenly, she was wide awake. Here she was on top of the castle wall. Night-time locked the place in darkness. Air currents cried through the battlements. Her neck hurt. She couldn’t move. Someone gripped her from behind. Their breath hissed in her ears. Luna? No, Luna’s lying dead in her tomb. At that moment she realized another powerful truth. Whoever held her was lifting her toward the top of the castle walls. In another moment they’d push her over. Nothing would stop her plunging to the ground far below.
KISSING THE MONSTER. The perfect climax to the Monsters’ Ball. Beech giggled.
‘No pushing. Keep in a line. No cutting in. OK?’ Beech swayed by the trestle table. ‘Me first.’
Beech kissed Uri on the mouth. The corpse lying there on the table responded with a writhing of limbs that slapped against the white sheet, which covered his body. A whistling started from the dead nostrils as spasms forced the lungs to contract. Blood ran from the nose.
One of the physiotherapists kissed him next. ‘His lips don’t keep still,’ she exclaimed. ‘They keep moving like this.’ She mimicked a gold fish.
The next announced that Uri’s tongue had entered his mouth the moment their lips touched. The man had tasted Uri’s blood. It was astonishingly sweet, the man added. Sweeter than ice cream. Kissing the corpse. Paul swayed. A pleasant bubble of well-being surrounded him. The deliciously energizing coffin paint was a generous spirit. Its warmth flowed in his veins. He was scrumptiously happy. Now it was Paul’s turn to give Uri his goodnight kiss, before they launched the dead man on his voyage into everlasting night.
Paul took his turn beside the corpse with the bandaged head. The arms still jerked on the chest. Fingers flexed as if trying to chase away the stiffness that must be creeping into them. The eyes were closed but the lips pressed together in a pulsing motion. It gave the appearance of the cadaver chewing on tough meat. Paul used his tongue to moisten his own lips.
The crash of the door made everyone turn round. Caitlin stood there, her chest heaving as she caught her breath.
‘You’ve got to do something! He’s going to murder Elsa!’
26
The Fall
‘Dominion! Leave her alone!’ Paul came to his senses as he shouted at the male figure struggling with Elsa up on the walkway. They were forty feet above the courtyard; the darkness meant he could see little more than the green dress that Elsa wore.
‘Dominion! Stop it!’ Paul raced for the steps that led to the walkway.
‘Dominion!’
Elsa heard the name being shouted from below. But when she turned in her attacker’s grasp so she’d be face-to-face she knew exactly who it was.
‘Saiban?’
Perspiration soaked his cheeks as he struggled to heave her over the wall.
‘Saiban, what are you doing? Let go of me!’
Saiban gasped, ‘I’m not going to let you, or the rest, ruin everything.’
As she forced his head back with her hand under his chin she hissed, ‘You killed Luna, didn’t you?’
‘You’ve all got to die anyway. Why prolong your agony?’
‘Saiban, stop it. You’re hurting—’
‘They’ll destroy you in the end.’
His huge, mournful eyes with their down-turned corners gazed into hers. Despite his fight to lift her over the battlement they appeared strangely still, as if he’d abandoned himself to the inevitable a long time ago.
‘Saiban, you’re out of your mind!’
‘No. I’m not mad. I’m loyal. Forgive me, Elsa, I’m working for a greater good. Now please submit. Be merciful on yourself.’
‘No.’
‘If I don’t kill you the townspeople will.’
‘What do you mean? Greater good? What is it you know?’
‘Hush. Let it go, Elsa. Give in.’
‘What is it, Dominion? You know something we don’t?’
‘I know everything.’ For the first time ever Elsa saw Saiban smile. ‘Just as the powers that be made Dominion different, so they entrusted in me the capacity to … No, not telling. Never shall. Everything you want to know is inside my head – and that’s exactly where it’s staying.’ The smile became a deranged leer. At that moment, Elsa knew that the nervous strain on Saiban had overwhelmed him.
A voice rang out nearby, ‘Saiban. Let go of her.’
‘Paul … please, he’s breaking my arms.’ As she said the words she focused her eyes as if looking at a face just behind Saiban’s shoulder. It worked. The expression on her face forced her attacker to glance back. Paul, however, had just scaled the steps on the far side of the castle. It would be another forty seconds before he reached them. She used the distraction to head butt Saiban as hard as she could in the back of the skull. Even someone as bloodless as the melancholic Saiban feels pain. He grunted. One hand slipped away from Elsa’s upper arm as instinctively he clutched the back of his head. Elsa’s vision blurred from the force of the jolt against her own brow, but she gritted her teeth, then wriggled free of his grasp.
She yelled, ‘Now it’s time for you to give up, Saiban!’
His eyes blazed with fury.
‘I’m going to tell them you killed Luna.’ She shook her head in disbelief. ‘Why did you do it, Saiban?’
‘You’ve clearly not been listening to what I’ve been saying, Elsa. All you’re getting out of me is this one nugget of information: All of you here are surplus to requirements. Nobody needs you. Can you absorb that? Now, I shall demonstrate my loyalty. If you’re at least half as intelligent as you pretend to be, watch, you might learn something.’
Saiban always moved slowly, as if he took part in some stately procession. This time his movements were a blur as he scrambled on to the wall. He stood there on the coping stones with the cold night breeze running through his hair. He faced in toward the courtyard where the God Scarers stared up at him. By this time Paul and West were perhaps ten paces from Elsa; they slowed; they knew running would do no good.
‘Listen to me.’ Saiban’s cold voice was as much a drone as the noise of the wind flowing from the ocean. ‘You haven’t the courage, I know that. But you could do worse than follow me.’ With that he allowed himself to topple backwards.
27
Body Talk
Saiban was easy to find. After winching up the portcullis the God Scarers walked around the foot of the castle walls to the point where Saiban
jumped. With there being no flashlights they’d improvised by setting lighted candles in empty glass jars. The shock of recent events had sobered them up fast. Elsa no longer felt the effects of the coffin paint but her neck was still sore from where Saiban had tried to snap it.
Beneath them the town lay sleeping. Scaur Ness nestled in darkness, the harbour pool glistening in its midst with its sad array of derelict ships. What would the population make of this bizarre candlelit procession, Elsa asked herself. They’d say their monster neighbours had gone mad. Or they were conducting a satanic rite.
Dominion emerged from the shadows to join them. He’d been nowhere to be seen during Saiban’s attack on her. Perhaps the giant had been brooding in secret over the way his limbs had been changing colour. Or how scars had formed deep red gullies in his flesh. He was different from the get-go. Now he was changing … or evolving … further away from the nature of a transient: the beings resurrected by humankind to diligently serve humankind. Only humanity had become disgusted by their creation. Now they turned their collective faces from their dead that they’d dragged back into the world of the living.
The cool breeze whispered out of the night. Above them there were no stars. All she could make out by candlelight, apart from a few yards of road, were her fellow refugees – Dr Paul Marais, Beech, Xaiyad and the rest. Oh, and the human guest, of course. Caitlin walked beside Paul. You only had to look at them, and the word ‘couple’ presented itself in your mind.
Anyway, Saiban … The mournful spook of a man was easy to find in death. His body had fallen on a low outbuilding, not far from where they’d found Luna – his victim. Well, strictly speaking Saiban didn’t lie on the roof. Projecting vertically from the side of the roof was a steel fence topped with foot-high spikes to prevent vandals scaling it. Saiban had crashed on to the spiked barrier lengthways. The first spike skewered his left thigh above the knee. Its bloody point stood above his leg by several inches. Then at intervals of six inches were a line of another half-a-dozen spikes. Saiban’s body had impaled itself so neatly it looked as if a row of mutant steel spines ran up the centre of his body as he lay there on his back; his right leg and arms hung down limply at each side of the fence. For a moment they stared at Saiban’s bloody body, the spikes erupting from his leg, stomach and chest. Damage to internal organs had been catastrophic. In her mind’s eye, she could picture the metal blade that punched right through the centre of his heart, to rip through its blood-filled chambers, arteries and muscle wall. Death would be instantaneous. Of course, his God Scarer biology meant that the body still twitched. The mouth formed an O shape in a rhythmic way; as if the pulsation of the lips struggled to compensate for the lack of heartbeat.
‘Burn him,’ West told them. ‘Before we cremate Uri, burn this bastard. With luck he’ll still feel the fire before it incinerates him.’
Beech shook her head. ‘I say we shove him over the edge of the cliff. He’s trash anyway.’
‘No.’ Elsa was emphatic.
‘Why ever not? You know full well what he did to Luna. For God’s sake, he nearly did the same to you!’
‘Saiban knew the truth about what was happening to us.’ Elsa nodded at Saiban. ‘Take him inside.’
West glared at the body in disgust. ‘He’s dead. He’s not going to talk, is he?’
Beech agreed. ‘Just drop him into the ocean.’
‘Look, what he knew might be important. Don’t we still want to know about the thousands of people who we processed at the transit station? All the dead we brought back to life only for them to vanish the moment they left?’
Paul said, ‘We’d like to know that, Elsa, and a good deal more, but Saiban made sure we’d never find out when he took a dive off the castle wall.’
Saiban gave a weird grunt as if in agreement. Xaiyad reached up to grip the corpse’s jerking wrist. After checking the pulse – or lack of it Xaiyad nodded. ‘Saiban is dead. What we’re seeing are the usual after-death convulsions.’
‘Throw him off the cliff,’ Caitlin shouted.
‘And sooner the better.’ West was angry. ‘He tried to persuade us to surrender so we’d be killed by the humans. When we refused he tried to finish us himself.’
‘No,’ Elsa shouted. ‘It’s more than that. He said there was a plan.’
‘What plan?’
‘I don’t know.’ Elsa gestured in frustration. ‘Take him inside. Go through his pockets. We need to find out what’s really happening. Saiban knew; that’s why he killed himself rather than allow us the chance of finding out.’
‘Well, we’re never going to know.’ Beech folded her arms. ‘He’s dead.’
Dominion stepped forward. ‘I know what to do. But I’ll need your help.’
With that he reached up, tugged the corpse free from the spikes, then carried it back to the Pharos.
An insane night is the ideal breeding ground for wild, mad acts. First, they cremated Uri’s body on the cliff top on a huge funeral pyre built from wooden bed frames found in a storeroom. They covered their ears when the burning corpse groaned. A mournful music that ate its way into their hearts.
Dominion locked Saiban’s corpse in the very storeroom emptied of bed frames. Saiban made excited sighing noises as if he predicted extraordinary times ahead for the God Scarers. After that, Dominion vanished into the night. Maybe he’s gone night fishing, Paul told himself with a stab of dark humour, but something tells me he’s got other plans in mind. God help us all. Some of the God Scarers returned to the cafeteria where the coffin paint waited for them. Within half an hour Beech stood naked on the castle walls with her arms and legs outstretched to form an X-shape of naked womanhood – all curves, softness, with glints of red hair in the darkness. Paul could only guess at the hallucinations that roared through her mind. Maybe she called on some ancient god to take her. Did she see a vast luminous face rising from the ocean? Anything’s possible with coffin paint.
As he passed Elsa in the courtyard she showed him her bruised throat. The liquor had left her elated. ‘Saiban knows everything, you know? Where all those tens of thousands of transients went. Why Dominion is different to the rest of us.’ She giggled; her alcohol fuelled breath cut through Paul like a knife.
‘Elsa, you’ve been through hell tonight. Why not get some rest?’
‘Are you going to lie down with me?’ Her eyes grew large. ‘No, you won’t keep me company, Doctor Paul; bedside manner not included.’ She swayed.
‘Take it easy, Elsa.’
‘Take it easy? That’s what Saiban said to me. Take my second death easy, that’s what he meant, didn’t he?’
‘Look, that stuff you’ve been drinking—’
‘Grants us with revelations, I know.’ She snorted; the smouldering eroticism flared into anger. ‘Not only Saiban knew things. I know things. Hard facts. Dominion is different.’
‘That’s because his mind woke too soon. It must be the—’
‘It’s not his mind!’ Her voice echoed from the walls. ‘It’s physical. His body. You’ve seen how its changing colour. Arms paler than his head; torso darker than his neck. You can figure out what Dominion is as well as I can.’
‘Elsa, that drink is potent. You should—’
‘Shut up, or you’ll throw me from the fucking tower?’
‘No. All I want—’
‘Dominion is …’ Her eyes blazed as she swayed there. ‘Listen to me, Paul. Dominion is a Frankenstein. A real Frankenstein monster. He’s not like us who were brought back in one piece. You saw his scars; the different coloured skin? Dominion has been glued together. He’s a hundred different body parts. He’s a kit monster. An amalgam. A jigsaw. And that, Paul, is why Dominion claimed to be the First Man.’
‘Rest, Elsa, then we’ll talk.’
‘No. I’m going up there.’ She raised her eyes to the highest tower. ‘Up there I can hear the dead sing to me. No, not our kind. The old, old dead. The people who built the stone circle up on the hill. You know something,
Paul? They want me. Do you think I should go up there and find out what they want? Hmm?’
When he gently suggested she sleep off the liquor he found himself talking to the night air. She’d run for the tower. Hell, what a night. Gales of laughter came from the cafeteria. Rather than God Scarers in there it sounded like a student party going into overdrive. Calls, laughter, hooting, you name it.
Paul couldn’t face that sober. He went in search of Dominion. The last thing they needed was their very own Frankenstein monster ripping up the town – if that’s what he intended. But what did he intend? He seemed to work to his own hidden agenda. As he made his way to the portcullis a voice called to him from one of the doors that led from the castle buildings into the courtyard. He turned to see a door part open with a stark white face behind it.
Luna? He blinked as the image came to mind of the woman Saiban had killed.
‘Paul. Please come here for a moment.’
He craned his head forward to see into the shadows. ‘Caitlin? Are you all right?’
Quickly, Paul crossed the courtyard to the doorway. Beyond it was a gloomy office with maps of the coastline on the walls. As he entered, she closed the door behind him. Even though the darkness was almost absolute her eyes gleamed at him. They appeared as huge shining orbs in the darkness.
‘Paul. That stuff you and the rest have been drinking. You’ve no idea what it’s like.’
‘I guess they don’t call it coffin paint for nothing.’
‘Every week someone drinks themselves to death with it.’
‘You might have noticed our own prospects for a long life aren’t favourable.’
‘It’s not just the physical damage. There’s a fungus in there that sends people insane. There’s a man in our street who’s convinced his hands have become mouths filled with sharp teeth. He’s terrified that they’re going to eat him in his sleep.’ The eyes narrowed. ‘It’s not funny, Paul.’