Sam Black Shadow

by Paul Berry

  Baltus coughs at them. ‘At least try to make these young people feel welcome.’ He gestures to an empty table and we sit on the rickety chairs. The townspeople look away and start murmuring.

  The ceiling is tar-yellow with smoke, and the dark-panelled walls are hung with paintings of nautical scenes. Fixed above the bar is a giant swordfish, and the man behind it looks at us and whispers into Baltus’s ear.

  Rachel points to one of the paintings. It depicts an old-fashioned scene of Preston, a top-hatted driver of an open-top horse-drawn carriage pulling a stiffly dressed couple down the cobbled high street, the distinctive clock tower looming over them.

  ‘It can’t be a coincidence,’ I say.

  She purses her lips. ‘And the sweater from the college.’ She glances at the entrance door. Before I can reply, Baltus rattles three tumblers of whiskey onto the table. He raises his glass.

  ‘For the health of your future children.’ Rachel rolls her eyes. We clink the glasses together. The whiskey burns my throat and I cough. Rachel grimaces and wipes her mouth with her sleeve.

  ‘It’ll put some hair on your chest.’ He winks.

  ‘I’ll pass on the hairy chest,’ she says.

  ‘Where did the painting come from?’ I ask, looking at the scene of Preston. Baltus is about to take a sip from his glass, but then puts it down.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he says.

  ‘What?’

  ‘I had no choice. None of us do.’

  ‘Fuck … Sam,’ Rachel slurs. She tries to stand up but collapses back on her chair. The room starts to tilt and I grasp my forehead. She fumbles between her legs for the backpack.

  The woman with the pipe rushes over. ‘Not so fast, honey.’ She snatches it from Rachel’s grasp.

  ‘You did something to the whiskey,’ I say, the edges of my vision starting to blur into shadow.

  Baltus takes a small green bottle from his pocket and taps it. ‘You’re both going to have a nap.’ Rachel falls forward on the table, her forehead connecting with a thud against the wood. I try to stand, but the room spins and my legs feel like they are lead trunks growing from the floor.

  The last thing I see before the shadows darken to blackness is a pinpoint of light reflected from the mocking glass eye of the swordfish.

  ✽

  In the corner of the living room is a Christmas tree decorated with tinsel, red and gold crackers poking out from the branches, the sweet smells of vanilla and cinnamon from candles permeating the air. Outside, the morning sun shines brightly while plump flakes of snow stick to the window.

  ‘You’re just in time for dinner,’ my mother says to me as she finishes laying knives and forks on the dining table.

  ‘It looks wonderful,’ my dad says, kissing her on the cheek. ‘Doesn’t it, Sam?’

  ‘You’ve outdone yourself yet again.’ I pull out a chair for her at the table.

  ‘Would you mind carving the turkey?’ she asks. ‘Your dad’s all thumbs.’ He pours her a glass of champagne and it foams over the brim. The bubbles fizz on the white tablecloth, circling around each other like planets in a miniature universe.

  Like spheres.

  He looks at me and a befuddled expression passes across his face. She brings the glass to her lips and sips it, staring at us both. I slowly push back my chair and stand up.

  ‘Dad. We need to leave. Now.’

  ‘Where am I?’ He looks at his hands as if they’re not real.

  ‘He’s not going anywhere,’ she says. ‘This is his home now. And forever.’ I seize hold of his arm and pull him towards the front door. It’s locked. I grab an umbrella from the stand and stab the latch with the metal point. She starts laughing, the sound deep and crackly.

  Her body melts away like wax, revealing a shuddering creature beneath, its head a billowing mass of tentacles.

  ‘Sam!’ my dad shouts. It grabs him around the neck and pulls him towards itself. Wormy appendages envelop his body and his screams become muffled, as though he’s being dragged underwater.

  The mass of flesh surges towards me.

  Chapter 35

  At first I think I’m on a boat, its rise and fall fluttering the bottom of my stomach, then I hear voices chanting hypnotically around me in a strange language. I force my heavy eyelids open. For a moment all I can see are blurred shapes until my eyes start to focus. I am hovering several feet in the air on a chair, wearing a blue velvet robe, my wrists bound with rope to the arms. I try moving my legs, but they are also trussed up.

  On a chair next to me, Rachel is sitting motionless with her chin resting on her chest, her hair covering her face. The chairs are fixed on a wooden platform, twin poles from its base resting on the shoulders of four cowled figures. In front of them, a line of red-hooded figures carry swinging lanterns on chains. We are moving down a tree-lined street lined with boarded-up houses, the night sky so clear, I could touch the stars. The chanting gradually becomes faster, words blending together to form a solid drone, but there is one word I can still make out.

  Dagona.

  ‘Sam,’ Rachel mumbles. She jerks back the hair from her face and her eyes are wide with fear, the moonlight making them luminous. I try pulling my arms free, but the ropes are too tight, and my heart clenches when I notice the pale grooves in the wood around my wrist.

  I’m not the first to be bound to this chair, struggling to escape.

  ‘Let us the fuck go!’ Rachel screams. I push down with my legs to move the chair, but it’s secured to the platform. The procession turns left and passes through the gates of the church.

  It seems alive, nightmarish, its amphibious walls pulsating wetly like excited flesh, red stained glass windows glowing from the mass like eyes. My head bangs painfully against the back of the chair as they slowly walk up the steps to the open door, tipping the platform at an angle.

  ‘Let us go and we won’t call the police!’ Rachel shouts. The figures bend their knees slightly as we are carried through the door, the gothic frame missing the tops of our heads by inches.

  There are two rows of dark wooden pews, and the congregation place their lanterns along the length of the church. On the stone walls are long tapestries depicting hunched creatures with amphibious faces carrying tridents, at the front of the church, a long black altar lit with tall candles. Carved into the wall behind the altar is a huge relief of a squid-headed creature with bat wings, its mouth cascading with tentacles.

  As my eyes adjust to the flickering gloom, I see a hooded figure in black standing in front of the altar. They continue chanting, the sound echoing around the church so that it sounds like a thousand voices, the air thick with incense that smells like overripe fruit.

  They hoist the poles off their shoulders, groaning from the effort, and set the platform down in front of the altar. The chair jolts as it hits the stone floor, and my teeth snap together.

  The chanting stops and the figure in black nods at one of the cowled figures who was carrying the platform. He draws a curved knife that is tucked under a rope around his waist. I look at Rachel in terror as he moves towards her and raises it.

  ‘Stop!’ I shout. Rachel scrunches her eyes closed.

  The knife cuts through the ropes binding her wrists and ankles, the severed pieces pattering to the floor.

  ‘Don’t try to escape,’ the figure in black says in a rasping male voice. ‘Or the next thing sliced will be your throats.’

  ‘What do you want with us?’ Rachel asks, ‘Have we been kidnapped and made to join some sad Halloween party?’ She tries to sound defiant, but her voice warbles with fear. The acolyte in red bends down and cuts through my wrist ropes, nicking the side of my hand, and I gasp with pain. I rub my wrists to disperse the pins and needles as he bends down and cuts the ropes around my ankles. I can hear scuffling and creaking wood behind me as the congregation seem to be settling into
the pews.

  ‘Both of you, stand up,’ the man in black orders. We shakily get to our feet. ‘Take off your robes.’ His vocal cords creak from the effort of speaking. The command seems to squirm inside my brain, and I unfasten the robe and let it fall to the floor, relieved to see I’m still wearing my clothes underneath. Rachel is clenching her jaw as though fighting against it, but then grunts in frustration and removes her robe.

  ‘Thank you for bringing me this.’ He holds out the piece of crystal. His hand is grey and withered, his voice simultaneously reverberating inside my ears and behind my eyes.

  ‘Feel free to choke on it,’ Rachel says.

  ‘Whatever you need it for, it won’t work,’ I say. ‘If you let us go, we can get the other piece.’

  The man in black chuckles and pulls back his hood. ‘Always trying to be helpful, aren’t you, Sam?’

  His head looks like a skull with chitinous skin stretched across it, the lips drawn back over yellow teeth in the semblance of a grin. Despite the ravage of decay, I still recognise his features from a picture that was in Preston’s Evening Post. He’s a student who disappeared months ago from the college, and I desperately try to remember his name.

  ‘Howard?’ Rachel asks, recalling the name just after it pops into my head.

  ‘Not quite,’ the thing says, brushing wisps of hair from his forehead. ‘Unfortunately, the human body is a fragile mechanism not built to last. I’ve almost burnt through this one – a pity, as he was a handsome boy.’ I turn to the entrance. It is guarded by two hooded followers.

  ‘You’d never make it to the doors, Sam,’ he says. ‘Bring her to me.’ One of the acolytes grips Rachel by the arm and pulls her towards the altar.

  ‘Don’t touch me!’ she spits, trying to wriggle from his grasp.

  The creature caresses her cheek with a skeletal hand and she grimaces. ‘Such a beautiful face, so strong, so full of vitality.’

  He darts forwards like a rotting cobra, grabs her face and kisses her. She makes a gurgling sound and slaps at his arms, scraping off pieces of dead skin.

  ‘Get off her!’ I shout and try to leap forward, but my arms are held behind my back. Rachel’s hands fall to her sides and the creature’s body cracks like dried kindling and crumples to the floor. She wipes her mouth and smiles, clasping her hands to her cheeks.

  ‘I’ve never felt so alive.’ She giggles. She walks up to me. ‘Release him.’ The acolyte holding my arms lets go.

  ‘Rachel?’ I ask, already knowing that something has invaded her body. She grins and slowly shakes her head.

  ‘Give her back to me,’ I beg. ‘Please.’

  ‘That could be arranged, but first you need to do something for me.’ Her pupils look strange, rectangular like those of an octopus. ‘I know you opened a door for Hastur. I want you to do the same for me.’

  ‘You’re Dagona, Hastur’s sister.’ The picture from The Travellers Between Spheres showed them both as children standing in front of a chained-up demon.

  ‘Very adroit. I can see why Rachel likes you. That crystal is the key to our prisons. Like my brother, my body is indisposed, asleep far beneath the ocean bed, imprisoned by our father.’

  I remember my dad’s advice to me if I was ever threatened.

  Keep them talking while you figure out how to escape. Most of all, try to stay calm – a stress-scrambled brain won’t come up with a good escape plan.

  ‘And where is your father?’ I ask. If I ran towards the entrance now, I would be quickly apprehended by the congregation before reaching the doors. I will have to bide my time until there is a distraction.

  ‘He underestimated our combined strength. Before he interned us, we set a trap to confine him.’

  ‘How do you know about me?’

  ‘The eye of my mind stretches from the depths of the oceans to the ends of the earth. When your mother and her brethren performed that fallacious ritual, the same thing happened to me. Rituals have a synchronicity, the foundation of all magics, something your mother in her hubris failed to realise. My essence was released while my body remained in its dreamless slumber.’

  ‘She is the only one who can use the crystal. Let Rachel and me go.’

  ‘Lies are not your forte, Sam. I know it was you who unwittingly scried the symbols that were used to summon us. I’ve been watching you for a long time, waiting until you were ripe enough to wield the crystal.’

  On the altar behind her is a chalice. If I used it to break one of the windows, I could jump through, although the glass might tear me up worse than it did at Adam’s house.

  ‘Why do you take the children from Preston?’ I ask.

  ‘Unfortunately, like my brother, I was bound by certain restrictions. The ritual’s magics came at a cost. Only those born on Preston or New Innsmouth soil make suitable hosts.’

  ‘The book that fell in the library and that drawing I did of New Innsmouth. You made them happen. You tricked us here.’

  Rachel smiles. ‘I’m going to make you a generous offer. Awaken me and I will leave this body. As a bonus, I will also free your father.’

  ‘You sound like Hastur. He likes to make offers too. If I release you, you’ll also destroy the world.’

  ‘Nonsense. I’m not like my brother. I merely want to return to my world, to reclaim my throne.’

  In the blackness of her pupils I see a vision unfolding. The earth’s seas crashing over the land while she rises from the depths. Before being banished to the earth, she lived in the vast oceans of alien planets, turning them toxic and consuming all life before moving to the next.

  ‘Sam, you have no choice. You can do it willingly or I can make you do it. Escape is impossible. You can never leave this town. I had to take certain precautions to protect myself from outsiders and the Syncret.’

  ‘Even if I agree to use the crystal, Hastur has the other piece.’

  Rachel cocks her head to one side like a dog hearing something. ‘Not for long.’

  The doors to the church smash open, knocking the two hooded figures guarding them sprawling to the floor.

  My mother walks in. ‘You have something I need, sister. Something you have stolen.’

  ‘Not even one pleasantry?’ Rachel tuts. ‘It’s good to see you too, brother.’

  ‘I see you’ve already been busy.’ My mother casts a glance around the church. ‘What a dismal little place. Although quite fitting for the queen of crawling slime.’ She waggles her finger at me. ‘You shouldn’t have come here, Sam.’

  ‘It appears we have reached a stalemate,’ Rachel says. ‘We both possess the key to our freedom.’

  My mother holds out the other half of the crystal. It is quivering in her hand, desperate to be reunited with its cleaved twin. ‘How do you propose to resolve this impasse?’

  ‘If it’s a fight, brother, you’ll lose. I am stronger. Always have been.’ Tendrils of mist float from Rachel’s mouth and coil through the air, enveloping my mother’s face. An odour of decaying fish makes me wrinkle my nose in disgust. My mother flicks her hand and it dissipates.

  ‘Mind control?’ she laughs. ‘You overestimate your power. Your tawdry incantations have no prepotency over me.’

  ‘Shut up, both of you!’ I shout angrily. ‘I want my dad back!’ They both look at me, slightly shocked.

  ‘We have been oblivious to what Sam wants,’ Rachel says, ‘as usual.’ She taps her head. ‘I can read her thoughts. Your friend Rachel always chose her lover over you.’ She looks at me sadly. ‘I will not be so selfish. First things first, brother. We must bring the two halves of the key together.’

  My mother exhales in irritation. ‘Sam, hold out your hands.’ I look around the church. Faces shadowed by cowls stare in my direction.

  ‘And if I say no?’

  ‘Even though I’m separated from my body, I can still command it t
o tear your father apart in the Datum. He’ll suffer more than any other human has ever suffered.’

  ‘Enough cruelty,’ Rachel says, looking at me, her eyes lowered in sympathy. ‘Please do this for me, Sam. For your friend. For your father.’

  I hold out my hands. They place a piece of the crystal in each and I clasp them together. Green light sparks between them as the pieces merge, the facets realigning with each other.

  The church is quiet, and all I can hear is the wind buffeting against the stained glass windows.

  I raise my hand and offer them the crystal. ‘So, which one of you is going to take it?’ It feels like I’ve pushed my hand through the bars of a tiger’s cage and am waiting for it to be torn off.

  ‘Sam, get down!’ a familiar voice shouts behind me from the pews.

  I crouch and a flame-topped bottle arcs through the air over my head and explodes at their feet.

  A cloud of fire engulfs my mother’s legs and torso. She snarls and thrashes across the floor, knocking over an incense brazier, spilling the coals and igniting the tapestries. Rachel’s arm is ablaze and she claws at the flames.

  Screams fill the church as the robed followers panic and run towards the doors, wrenching them open. One of the followers steps into the aisle and stands resolute as they surge past.

  ‘You looked like you needed some help!’ he shouts, pulling back his hood.

  It’s Bruce.

  Chapter 36

  ‘Didn’t expect to see me here, did you?’

  I stuff the crystal into my pocket, run towards him and grab his hand. As he pulls me towards the doors, someone pushes between us, breaking our grip.

  ‘How dare you defile our queen!’ Baltus spits, clutching a handful of my jumper and raising a curved dagger above his head. I clench my fist, but before I can react, Bruce wrests him off and flings him between the pews, his head cracking against the wood.

  I stop and turn around. The flames have spread across the altar. The stone relief of the tentacled creature writhes in agony and the floor trembles as through something huge is unfurling deep below us.