Sam Black Shadow

by Paul Berry

  I cross my arms angrily. ‘He’s a prisoner here like I am. And Bert? Is he down here too?’ She doesn’t answer and flicks switches on the panel and the TV sparks into life, the screen hissing with white static. She opens the TV cabinet and pulls out two cables with plastic discs attached to the ends.

  ‘I’m just going to fix these to your body.’ I shake my head. ‘Sam,’ she says, her exaggerated tone the same as when she told me off as a child, ‘it’ll be over with in an instant. Pull up your sleeves.’ I sigh and roll them up as she sticks the cables to my forearms, the pads acting like suction cups. Instantly the white snow fuzz on the TV is replaced by molten bursts of colour. A high-pitched theremin whine tickles my ears and the picture changes again. It shows me as a glowing figure on the screen, colours radiating from my body in waves.

  She stares at the screen. ‘Oh my god. I can see it.’

  I strain my eyes, squinting them into focus. Inside the white light of my body is a black shape that looks like a twisted cockroach behind where my ribcage would be. A dark umbilicus stretches from its abdomen up through my neck and into my head, black tendrils fanning out from the end of it into my brain.

  I feel my stomach twitch as though it knows we’re watching.

  ‘How can I get it out?’ I ask, feeling like I’m going to vomit again. She flicks another switch and the screen goes blank.

  ‘I don’t know. I’ve never seen anything like this before. But we’ll find a way.’

  ‘Will Dr Stone be assisting?’

  ‘No. He’s never going to touch you again.’ The hum from the Kirlian machine gradually dies away as the lights on the control panel dim.

  ‘I have to carry out one more test,’ she says, ‘with your permission.’

  ‘That sounds like it’s going to hurt.’

  ‘I’m not going to lie, it might. But it could also save your life.’

  ‘Do I get a lollipop afterwards like at the dentist?’

  She smiles. ‘I’m sure I could find one for you. The green ones were always your favourite, if I remember correctly.’ She takes a small metallic box off a shelf. ‘It’s UV light. Effective against the creatures.’

  ‘You want to see if it burns me like a vampire?’ I hold out my arm.

  She holds the box above the back of my hand. ‘Are you ready?’ She pushes a button and bluish light fluoresces against my skin. Instantly it feels like scalding water is splashing over it and I snatch it away, protectively grabbing it with my other hand. She switches off the box and puts it back on the shelf.

  ‘I guess I won’t be sunbathing anytime soon,’ I say.

  ‘Does it hurt?’

  ‘It’s nothing. Just a bit tender.’ I look at the skin. Already, several small blisters have appeared.

  ‘Better to know now than walking out into daylight.’

  ‘Monsters like us have to live in dark dungeons.’

  ‘I suppose we do,’ she says sadly, adjusting her veil. ‘I have one more surprise to show you – a nice one this time.’

  ‘I haven’t liked the surprises I’ve had recently.’

  ‘Trust me, you’ll like it.’ She opens a door in the corner of the room. ‘Prepare to have your breath taken away.’ I stand next to her and peer through as the lights turn on automatically. In another much larger room are two long metal shelves of books, most leather bound and intricately tooled.

  ‘This collection has taken decades to assemble. Ancient texts which form the nexus for all of Jupiter Hill’s research.’

  ‘I’ve seen more impressive libraries,’ I say, remembering the amphitheatre of books in Adam’s house. Across the walls are charts of symbols, the same ones I saw inside the crystal.

  ‘Even after all these years, we’ve only scratched the surface of what these glyphs, these symbols, can do. So far the results have been unpredictable. Only Turing was truly able to decipher some of their meanings. A few minor summoning and binding rituals, some spells and incantations which can revive the dead and repel entities from the other places, although when he comprehended their power he eventually refused to help us any more.’

  ‘The knife Dr Stone used with the symbols on it, the one which hurt me, is that something you deciphered?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You must be so proud of your achievements.’

  ‘Our knowledge is limited. Which is why we have needed the help of special people who can offer us a more unique insight into them.’

  ‘The people you keep trapped here, you’re just using them to decipher some stupid hieroglyphics?’

  ‘They receive treatment for their maladies which they can’t receive anywhere else.’

  ‘They’re prisoners.’

  ‘We’re trying to help them.’

  ‘Just like you’ve helped me.’

  ‘What do you think would happen to you if you were kept in a normal hospital? Apart from killing half the patients, they would ultimately destroy you. The unfortunate incident with Tim is just the tip of your capabilities. At least here you stand a chance of being returned to normality.’

  ‘It hasn’t worked for you.’

  ‘A cure will be found. Eventually.’ On the opposite wall to the shelves of books is a square metal cabinet about three metres in height.

  ‘What do you keep in there?’ I ask. ‘More monsters?’

  ‘That’s where we store our most important artefacts.’

  ‘Like the crystal?’

  She nods. ‘There are things in there even more dangerous than the crystal.’ In the centre of the room on a plinth is a glass case. Inside is a black book. On the cover in raised letters that look like keloid scars is the title: Necronomicon.

  ‘That is the jewel in our crown. Your grandfather discovered it, the book which led to the creation of Jupiter Hill.’ The leather glistens in the light, almost as though it’s perspiring. It starts to slowly open as I stare at it. I walk up to the case and stroke the glass, feeing compelled to open it and touch the book.

  ‘Sam,’ my mother says. I look down and the cover has closed. ‘We’ll talk more in my private quarters.’

  Before we leave the library I take a last look around. On one of the walls is the picture I drew as a child, black crayon symbols on a door.

  ‘Is that how it started?’ I ask. She sees me looking at it and nods.

  ‘Perhaps some doors aren’t meant to be opened.’

  Chapter 20

  As we walk away from the room across the hall, Smith is standing guard next to the lift doors. He sniggers at me.

  ‘I’m glad you think this is funny,’ my mother says. ‘You realise you hurt my son?’

  He smirks and she grabs his neck, pinning him against the wall.

  ‘Next time, be more polite to him.’ She reaches down, grips his crotch and twists sharply. He lets out a high-pitched squeal and collapses to the floor, clamping his hands over his testicles.

  She unlocks a door opposite the lift while he groans in pain and we walk down a short corridor. At the end is a black door.

  ‘Home sweet home,’ she says. Inside, lampshades cast a homely glow over antique furniture, one wall packed with books, and for a peculiar moment it feels like I’m back in my bedroom. Velvet curtains are drawn over fake windows, giving the illusion that it is always night time. I sit next to her on a couch, still not believing she’s here, as though the photograph next to my bed has come to life and she’s stepped out from it.

  She takes a deep breath. ‘I don’t know where to start.’

  ‘From the beginning. Once upon a time and all that.’

  ‘You always did love fairy tales when you were a child. Ok, I’m going to tell you a story. Once upon a time, Herbert West, your grandfather, my father, was a soldier during the Second World War and his ship sank, torpedoed by a German warship. The three survivors scrambled onto a
lifeboat and were adrift in a storm. The boat was washed up on an island where he found the Necronomicon. He was the only one to escape alive. His companions, according to him, were killed by some creature that guarded the book.’

  ‘Why did he keep it?’ I ask. ‘Wasn’t that the reason his friends died?’

  ‘It became his obsession. When he realised what it was, he searched for ways to harness its powers. That’s when he built this facility and named its fledgling members the Syncret. He knew eventually something from one of the other worlds would tear through and destroy us. He wanted to find out their secrets, their weaknesses.’

  ‘A proactive monster-hunter?’ I ask.

  ‘Yes, in a manner of speaking. At first I wanted no part of his legacy. I tried to be ordinary. I became a teacher and a wife.’

  ‘But that wasn’t enough.’

  ‘Once you know the supernatural is real, the thirst to know more consumes you. I travelled the globe, searching for artefacts, digging up anything that would increase our knowledge of the symbols in the Necronomicon. Eventually, we opened a rift, a doorway to another place. Turing deciphered its name: the Datum. The rift opened briefly, but something went wrong.’

  ‘You opened the rift in Adam’s house.’

  ‘It used to be Aleister Crowley’s house, abandoned and shunned for years. People thought it was haunted.’

  ‘Crowley? The occultist?’

  ‘It was his summer house in the forties. After all his occult experimentation we thought the veil between the worlds would be thinner there, more pliant. In 1980, on Halloween night, I performed the ritual with Professor Ward and Nathaniel Peaslee.’ I remember a photo from one of her expeditions to the Nazca Lines in which she stood between a thin man with round glasses and a woman with a triangular birthmark on her forehead. She had talked about her colleagues, but the only name I still recall is Peaslee, as I thought it sounded like a cartoon dog.

  ‘At first nothing happened and we thought it hadn’t worked. Then we were blasted by some kind of energy. Ward and Peaslee took the full brunt of it. Their transformations have been more extreme. Mine was more insidious. First a rash and then more obvious symptoms. Then the disappearances in Preston started.’

  ‘Did you go back to the house?’

  ‘We tried looking, but it had vanished, as though it sensed our intentions.’

  I remember the red star pulsating above the house and that strange insect on the back of my hand in the woods. ‘I think it’s still partly in this Datum. That’s why you can’t find it.’

  ‘As we also suspected. You were always a bright boy.’

  ‘The drawing I did as a child after we found the crystal, the one that’s hanging in the library here. You used that to perform the ritual?’

  ‘Yes. The symbols contain power. They are the key to everything. I kept it secret that you drew them, told the Syncret that the crystal had only spoken to me. Somehow when we opened the geode that day in the garden, it imprinted on you.’

  ‘The crystal, is it connected to the Necronomicon?’

  ‘It can’t be just a coincidence that your grandfather found the book and then we dug up the crystal. Something wanted our family to find them; in some way we are inextricably bound to them. Unfortunately, the symbols they contain are almost indecipherable. More than just the mathematical genius of Turing, they need a mind that strides more than one world to fully comprehend them.’

  ‘Like mine and Tim’s.’ She nods. ‘Are the people here ever released?’

  ‘For their safety and others, we have to keep them contained. Without continuous guidance, they would eventually bring unimaginable horrors into our world.’

  ‘But you were the one who brought Adam through. You created the worst horror.’

  ‘It was an unfortunate mistake. Sometimes discovery is a destructive process. But you’re right; I was the architect of this nightmare.’

  ‘And if you told the Syncret it was me who could use the crystal from the start, you could have stopped him – saved all those people he killed.’

  ‘I thought we could find another way. You deserved a childhood, not one confined here as a tool to stop Adam.’

  Does she know about my ability to teleport myself physically? They already know I can project my mind and bring something back after returning with the book. Maybe Tim has already told them.

  ‘Why did you leave me and Dad?’

  ‘There was nothing I could do to halt my disease. I never wanted you to see me as a monster. Or your father.’

  ‘Does Dad know you’re here?’

  ‘No. And I never should have got involved with him. I should have chosen Jupiter Hill, but I fell in love. You know how love makes us act irrationally.’

  ‘Living two lives is exhausting.’

  She touches my face. ‘I wish I had been there to help you through it.’

  ‘Dad did the best he could.’ I feel a swell of resentment at her abandonment. She nearly broke him when she vanished and I was left to be consumed by fear and self-hatred.

  ‘Did you kill everyone on the bus?’ She bristles at the question.

  ‘Of course not. Call it a star-crossed fortuity. I was thrown clear – the burgeoning infection saved me, gave me a certain resilience to physical trauma. When I came to, the bus was burning on the side of the road. Nothing could be done to save them. I knew then that the world had to believe I was dead.’

  She gets up off the couch and goes to the curtains, pulls one back and touches the wall where a window should be. ‘I want you to use the crystal and bring Adam here, like you did with the book. Then maybe what he’s done to us can be reversed.’ She walks over to me and pushes the hair out of my eyes. ‘I can be your mother again.’

  ‘Do you promise you won’t hurt him?’ I hate the feeling of affection that still burns inside for him.

  ‘I’ll try, but I don’t think he’ll be cooperative. He could take a little persuasion.’ I think about telling her that Adam is not the thing they summoned, that the house itself is the real beast.

  I feel the creature stir. Tell them nothing!

  ‘Are you going to tell Dad you’re still alive?’

  ‘It’s better he never finds out. I know he’s met someone else and he’s happy.’

  ‘When do you want me to do it?’

  ‘Tomorrow. The thing inside you already has too much control. If it’s left much longer, you might not even remember who you are.’

  ‘Who are the others down here, the ones screaming in the cells?’

  ‘They’re like us, infected to some degree by the Datum. We study them and try to learn what we can.’

  ‘They’re like caged lab rats,’ I say.

  ‘Safer here than outside.’

  ‘Have they all been infected trying to open doorways?’

  ‘Most of them. Curiosity has a price,’ she says, fingering her veil.

  ‘Tim told me that when you bring people down here, they’re never seen again.’

  ‘He’s mistaken.’ She scratches her thumb with her forefinger, the same way she did when she lied to me as a child. ‘I know I’m asking a lot, but the Datum is already changing our world. You have to help us stop it.’ She grasps one of my hands. ‘The planet is on the brink and you might be the only one who can save it.’

  ‘I’m honoured by such a burden.’

  ‘Don’t you want to know what lies beyond, what secrets are waiting to be discovered?’

  ‘So far those secrets have nearly killed me. And you.’

  ‘I’ll keep you safe.’

  ‘You already broke that promise when you left.’

  She bows her head and sighs. ‘Will you help me?’ She is right about wanting to uncover secrets. Ever since the crystal was taken away I’ve been craving it, desperate to lose myself again in its facets.

  �
�Yes.’

  I also want to find out what horrors I can unleash on this world that I hate so much.

  I yawn as exhaustion catches up with me. She makes up the couch with blankets and I climb under them. For a moment I think she is going to kiss me goodnight, and I shudder in revulsion when I think of the growths sprouting out from her cheeks touching me.

  In the dream I am in my bedroom and staring at my video shelf. One of the boxes looks out of place, the spine plain black, and I pull it out. The cover is also completely black and I remove the cassette, push it into the recorder and sit on the edge of the bed. The television screen flickers and a film starts playing.

  A soldier wearing a tattered and filthy uniform staggers through a marsh, the sky flashing with lightning. Behind him are two other soldiers, their faces streaked with dirt. He looks around and pulls out a compass from his jacket pocket. Despite the grainy picture, I recognise his face from the photo in my mother’s album. It’s my grandfather when he was younger.

  They change direction and begin trudging up a hill. They reach the top and find a weathered stone figure, its head bulbous and misshapen like a bloated frog. Heavy rain starts falling and the man shivers, hugging his arms around his chest.

  ‘This island’s nothing but a desolate rock, Herbert,’ one of the soldiers says angrily. ‘There’s no gold.’

  ‘We must return to the boat,’ says the other. My grandfather takes out a ragged square of parchment from his jacket.

  ‘The treasure is supposed to be here,’ he says.

  ‘Treasure will be of no use if we freeze to death.’

  My grandfather runs his hand over the idol and presses the stone at various points. He looks at it, disconcerted, then back at the parchment.

  The other man starts laughing and coughing at the same time. ‘You dragged us here just to see this. Riches beyond our wildest dreams, eh? Was it worth killing everyone for that?’ The scene cuts to the interior of a ship. My grandfather and the two men slip from their bunks while the rest of the crew are sleeping. They nod, point their guns and start shooting at their sleeping comrades.

  My grandfather and his co-conspirators. Traitors and murderers.