“I’m not sure what I believe in any more,” said Gold. “It’s hard to have faith in Heaven and Hell when you live in a town where the dead come back to life as often as not.”
“Well, not quite that often,” said Callahan. “But I do know what you mean. I reburied Lucas DeFrenz earlier today.”
“Was he really an angel, do you think?”
“No; just a poor deluded soul, driven mad by his passing. He’s at peace now, in the arms of the Lord.”
They sat in silence for a while. Gold still looked worried, disturbed on some deep, fundamental level. Callahan wished there was something else he could say to ease his friend’s anxiety. Obviously there was something else on Gold’s mind. The old hero looked up suddenly, as though he’d just made a decision. He met the priest’s eyes squarely.
“Let me throw another name at you, Nate; see if you recognize it.”
“By all means.”
“Wild Childe.”
Callahan waited a moment to see if there was anything more, and then leant back in his chair and pursed his lips thoughtfully. “I can’t say it rings any bells. In what context did you hear the name?”
“From the Faerie. Sean asked them who was responsible for the murders in Shadows Fall, and they said the Wild Childe.”
“You can’t trust the elves, Lester. They delight in deceit and trickery. Anything you get from them cannot be trusted.”
Gold nodded slowly, but he didn’t look convinced one way or the other. Callahan decided it was time to change the subject.
“Let me try a name on you now, Lester. What can you tell me about James Hart?”
“I thought we might get around to him. It seems like his name is on everybody’s lips just now. I was talking with the town Council earlier; they’re going crazy over Hart. Apparently he’s disappeared. Dropped out of sight a few hours ago; so completely that neither the Sheriff’s people nor the Council’s pet sorcerers can find any trace of him. Lots of people claim to have met him, talked with him, but it’s hard to find two accounts that agree. Have you met him?”
“No. He worries me. I can’t believe it’s just coincidence that so many bad things started happening at exactly the same time he returned. I’ve heard some of the stories they tell about him. They say he cured a sick woman of her illness, and Jack Fetch knelt to him. One of the St Laurence mystics said he was an avatar of change, an agent of possibilities. I went to the Library and looked up the original prophecy. It’s surprisingly straightforward and unambiguous. James Hart will bring about the end of Shadows Fall. No ifs or buts or maybes.
“I’m sorry, Lester. You came here for help and comfort, and I can’t even offer a little hope. Just remember what I said. The Faerie cannot be trusted, and you can forget about an invasion by Christian terrorists. Stick with what matters; the murders. Great things are happening all around us, Lester. All we can do is cling to the things we understand. And just maybe things aren’t as bad as they seem. Who knows; maybe Shadows Fall has to be destroyed, so that something greater can take its place.”
“Thanks a lot, Nate. Very reassuring.”
They both chuckled quietly, and then Gold got to his feet, and Callahan got up and escorted him out of the study and back down the hall to the front door. Gold paused there a moment, as though searching for some last thing to say, something brave and meaningful, but in the end he just smiled and shook Callahan’s hand, and left. The priest watched him walk slowly back to his car, and pursed his lips thoughtfully as he closed the door. Things were coming to a head sooner than he’d expected. He walked back down the hall and into his study, and sat down at his writing desk. This was where he sat and marshalled his thoughts when he wrote his sermons, and he always preferred to sit there when he had anything important to decide.
He pulled open the bottom drawer of the desk and pulled out a pure white telephone. It looked perfectly ordinary, but it wasn’t connected to the town system in any way, and he’d been assured by those with reason to know what they were talking about that there was no way it could be listened in on by any outside agency, magical or technological. Callahan still hesitated to use it. This was Shadows Fall, after all. He sighed quietly, and picked up the receiver. There was no dialling tone, just a quiet hum, and then a voice said his name.
“Yes, it’s me,” said Callahan, and immediately felt foolish. Of course it was him; no one else could hear anything on this phone but him. That was the way it had been designed. “You must warn your superiors; things are getting out of hand here. If you don’t begin the invasion soon, you’ll lose all advantage of surprise. Your name is turning up on oracles’ lips all over Shadows Fall. They don’t know what it means yet, but it won’t take them long to find out. On top of that, there are too many unknown factors confusing the issue. First the murders, then James Hart’s return. Now he’s disappeared, and the Faerie are threatening to involve themselves in the town’s business.”
“Is there any chance of your role being discovered?” said the voice at the other end. It didn’t sound particularly concerned.
“I don’t know. I took a lot of risks smuggling your man in, and even more arranging the holes in the town’s defences, so you could send in that helicopter to pick him up. You should have told me he was an assassin!”
“You didn’t need to know. Keep your head down and you should be safe enough. Say again about the Faerie. Are they involved in the town’s defences?”
“I don’t know. They might be, in the future.”
“That must be discouraged. Such demons are powerful and unpredictable. We will eradicate them in good time, but the timing is unfortunate.”
“They are creatures of the night,” said Callahan dismissively. “They cannot stand against the Warriors of the Lord.”
“Of course not. But they could do great damage to our forces during the invasion. We haven’t come this far to risk losing the object of our assault. Do what you can to prevent the town turning to the Faerie for help. It won’t be long now. We will be coming soon, and then every demon and hellspawn will fall before us. We are the Warriors of the Cross; God’s chosen warriors, and none can stand against us.”
—
Sean Morrison dived head first into the plastic snowscene, and the shock of the sudden bitter cold knocked the breath right out of him. Snow and ice whirled around him as he tumbled through the air. Light from somewhere in the night showed him the snow-covered ground far below. He managed a short, shuddering breath and the cold stabbed through him again as freezing air filled his lungs. Morrison gritted his teeth and concentrated on turning his fall into a controlled dive. The ground still looked a long way away, but he’d done this before so he could do it again. From what he remembered of the last time he’d done it, the landing was going to be hard and painful, but in the end still the kind you could walk away from. Which was all that mattered.
Old Father Time really didn’t care for uninvited visitors. He had even less subtle ways of discouraging people who weren’t warned off by the long drop, but Morrison wasn’t worried. Well, not much. He frowned suddenly as he realized the air was growing thicker and more buoyant around him, slowing his fall. At first he thought that Time had relented, and decided to make things easier for him, but it only took him a few moments to realize that not only had he stopped falling, he was practically hovering in mid-air, buffeted on all sides by the storm. He glared into the swirling snow and pulled himself down through the storm, swimming through the freezing air with more purpose than grace. The ground began to rise again with increasing speed. Morrison had learned a few things from the Faerie over the years, mostly to do with will power and determination. And just a little magic. The blizzard parted suddenly before him, and the ground rushed up to hit him in the face.
The thickness of the packed snow cushioned his landing, but even so it was a good minute or two before he felt strong enough to climb out of the hole he’d made. He hugged himself tightly, trying to hold in some warmth in the face of the storm,
and looked about him. Not all that far away, All Hallows Hall called to him like a beacon. It couldn’t hide from him, no matter what Time did. In the Gallery of Frost, the Forever Door called to him as it called to all those who should have passed through it, but hadn’t. He headed for the Hall like a horse returning to its stable, and part of him wondered at how strongly he responded to the call, as though part of him, deep down, wanted to go through the Door and find peace. He smiled mirthlessly. There’d be time for peace later. Right now, he had things to do.
The storm’s fury increased, but it couldn’t stop him. He’d come a long way to talk to Old Father Time, and he had a few pointed and rather urgent questions to put to him. Like, for example, why someone with Time’s power and resources still hadn’t been able to locate or identify the murderer who’d been terrorizing Shadows Fall. And why he hadn’t warned the town about the coming of the Wild Childe. Whatever that was. And most of all, when was Time going to get off his ancient arse and do something? Morrison wanted to make it very plain that he and others in the town weren’t going to just sit back and wait patiently for Time to get his finger out. They had a few plans of their own to protect the town. Like unleashing the Faerie. Morrison grinned. That ought to light a fire under Time. Whatever happened, he was going to get some answers. Morrison was a firm believer in the virtues of personal confrontation. It was a lot harder for people to ignore you when you had your face pushed right into theirs.
All Hallows Hall loomed up out of the snow before him, huge and dark and not at all welcoming. The intensity of the storm increased again, as though making one last attempt to keep him away, but he just hunched his head down and trudged on through the snow, step by step. The wind howled, hitting him first from one side and then the other, and the bitter cold sank remorselessly into his bones, leeching his strength. But still the inner voice spoke within him, calling him on, and it didn’t take him long to find the single unmarked door. He kicked it open, and a bright golden light spilled out into the storm.
He stumbled inside, put his shoulder to the door and slammed it shut against the pressure of the wind. The roar of the storm fell away to a murmur, and warmth seeped slowly into his body. He stood with his back pressed against the door, staring at nothing as his laboured breathing slowly returned to normal. He grimaced as returning circulation drove pins and needles into his fingers, and then set about beating the accumulated snow from his clothes. There seemed to be rather a lot of it. Time really didn’t want visitors. He decided that if he ever had to do this again, next time he’d remember to choose a heavier coat first. He sniffed, and looked about him. The huge medieval Hall stretched away into the distance, shadows clustering about the sparsely-placed gas lamps. High above him, something stirred briefly in the rafters, and then was still again. The Hall hadn’t impressed Morrison the last time he’d been here, and it didn’t this time either. Mostly it looked like it could use some modern lighting and a good clean.
“Put the kettle on, Time! You’ve got a visitor!”
Morrison waited as his voice echoed loudly on the quiet, but there was no response. He’d have been surprised if there was. Time had already made it clear through the snowstorm that he wasn’t at all welcome. He set off down the Hall, stamping hard to loosen the last of the snow from his shoes, and to beat some feeling back into his frozen feet. The call of the Forever Door was louder and clearer now, but he tried not to listen to it any more than he had to. He hadn’t come here for that. He had too many things to do. There’d be time for the Door later. Much later.
He had to keep thinking that. It was the only way to stay sane.
By the time he reached the Gallery of Bone, his hands and his feet felt as though they belonged to him again. He strode past the portraits on the walls without even glancing at them, ignoring the moving images and the sudden bursts of sound. He didn’t have time to be distracted. Which was why the arm that shot out of the portrait on his left caught him so completely by surprise. He lurched to a halt as the clawed hand closed on his collar and then shook him effortlessly like a dog shakes a rat. Morrison tried to grab at the hand, but couldn’t reach that far behind him. The hand spun him round, and Morrison found himself staring into the portrait of a huge hulking beast with wide staring eyes and a crimson maw studded with jagged teeth. Great muscles bulged in the arm as the beast dragged Morrison kicking and struggling towards it, and saliva spilled smoking from its mouth. Morrison stopped struggling and stepped forward, to gain himself a little slack, and then kicked the beast squarely between the thighs. If he’d been kicking a football, it would have travelled the full length of the field. As it was, the beast’s eyes bulged and then squeezed shut, and the hand let go of his collar. He stumbled backwards away from the portrait, and tensed, waiting for the beast to come after him again, but nothing emerged, and after a moment he relaxed a little and set off down the corridor again.
Morrison scowled as he pulled his coat back into a more comfortable position. Things like that weren’t supposed to happen.
In fact, it was supposed to be impossible for anyone or anything to travel through the portraits except Time’s automatons. If Time was losing control of the Gallery, things were even more worrying than he’d thought. In many ways, Old Father Time was the glue that held Shadows Fall together, that made its many overlapping realities possible. What the hell was happening, that Time himself could be affected? Morrison increased his pace a little, carefully keeping to the middle of the corridor, just in case some other portrait’s occupant was feeling frisky. He tried not to look at them as he passed, but almost in spite of himself he kept catching glimpses of scenes full of sound and fury, with wild faces and sometimes the flicker of flames. Time’s attention was elsewhere, and the town knew it. Morrison was so preoccupied with the portraits that he didn’t hear the steady footprints coming up behind him until they were almost upon him.
Some instinct warned him at the last moment, and he stopped and spun round to find himself almost face to face with a towering metal automaton. It loomed up before him like a clockwork giant, its gleaming brass and silver parts tick-tocking quietly as wheels revolved and armatures swung. Metal arms shot out to grab Morrison, but he evaded them easily. He danced around the metal figure, blushing with anger at how close he had come to being caught again. Time wasn’t going to stop him that easily.
He darted in and out, slapping and pushing the automaton while staying always out of reach, just to prove it couldn’t touch him. The thing was fast enough and strong enough to catch any normal man, but Morrison had lived in the land beneath the hill. Finally he ran out of patience, tripped the automaton and sent it crashing to the floor. He left it thrashing on its back like an overturned turtle and hurried on down the corridor. He’d have to be on his toes from now on. He had no friends in the Gallery of Bone.
He jogged along the corridor, conserving his strength, dodging into nooks and crannies and the occasional cul-de-sac to avoid more automatons as they appeared silently out of portraits on the walls. Presumably Time was too busy with whatever was filling his time these days to turn his full attention on who was running loose in his Gallery, but there was no telling how long that would last. He ran on, evading automatons where he could and dancing his way past those he couldn’t. Screams and howls echoed from the portraits, and chilling sounds of violence and rage. But finally he came to Time’s private sanctum, and stopped outside the door for a moment to get his breath back. He didn’t want Time to think he was in any way rattled. Morrison took a deep breath, kicked the door open and strode in like he owned the place. First impressions are always important.
Unfortunately, he’d wasted that impression on an empty room. He scowled, and glared about him. The place looked much the same as the last time he’d seen it; a riot of psychedelic lights and colours, like a Rorschach blot of the sixties. Patterns of light seethed and bubbled on the walls, and the air was thick with incense. Throw cushions lay scattered across the floor, and a huge Indian hookah stood non
chalantly in a corner. There were flowers and peace signs everywhere, and the gentle strumming of guitars murmured from hidden speakers. It felt rather like he was having a flashback. In a way, it was almost like coming home again… but Morrison stepped on that thought hard. He couldn’t afford to give Time any openings. Besides; such thoughts were dangerous. They led to the Forever Door.
“What the hell are you doing here?”
Morrison smiled genuinely as the harsh voice erupted behind him. He turned unhurriedly and nodded amiably to the young punkette in the black leather and chains standing in an opposite door that hadn’t been there a moment ago.
“Dear Mad; don’t ever change. It’s part of your charm.”
“Cut the crap, Morrison,” said Madeleine Kresh as she advanced on him, scowling. “You’re not supposed to be here. No one’s supposed to be here. Time isn’t seeing anyone.”
“He’ll see me,” said Morrison easily. “I have something important to discuss with him.”
“Look, dickless, Time has shut himself away and locked the door. He won’t even see me. So you can turn around and strut right out of here. Whatever Time’s up to, he doesn’t mean to be disturbed.”
“Did I mention you’re looking particularly revolting today?”
“Flattery will get you nowhere.”
“Come on, Mad; something’s wrong and you know it. Time’s never locked himself away before when there were genuine emergencies to be dealt with. You’re closer to him than anyone. Have you noticed anything… unusual about his behaviour just recently?”
Mad scowled unhappily, her black and white patterned face seeming briefly young and vulnerable. “Hard to tell with Time, but… yeah. Spends all day walking up and down the Gallery, staring at the portraits. Since he can see them all perfectly well from here anyway, it beats the hell out of me what he thinks he’s doing. Or what he’s looking for. He’s called in all his automatons; I don’t think there’s one left anywhere in the town. And he’s stopped talking to me. Usually he’s always going on and on about his work and what valuable lessons there are to be learned from observing him, and it’s all I can do to get him to shut up. But he’s changed. Ever since James Hart came to see him, he’s been… distracted.”