by Paul Berry
My mother staggers to her feet, clothes melded onto her flesh, one side of her face a patchwork of charred skin and bone.
She smiles through gritted teeth. ‘The game has begun.’ The front row of pews is now ablaze, a wall of fire separating us. She throws herself at one of the windows, smashing through the stained glass.
Rachel stands in front of the altar surrounded by the encroaching blaze, her jumper smouldering. ‘Run all you want, Sam, I’ll find you. I have all the time in the world.’ She disappears behind curtains of black smoke.
A jostling crowd of people flow around us and stream out of the church, desperately shedding their robes to reveal frightened faces.
We run through the doors and down the steps, coughing. The whole church shudders in agony, and for a moment I think the stone octopus perched on the buttress is about to leap down onto us. A window explodes outwards and spikes of flame lick through. Baltus emerges, his forehead slick with blood, trips over his robes and tumbles down the steps into a groaning heap.
‘How did you get here?’ I pant. We run down Pickman Street, the enraged shouts growing distant behind us.
‘It’s a long story,’ Bruce gasps. ‘Still not sure I believe it myself.’ We sprint across the empty town square and cut down a twisting ginnel. I start coughing more violently and stagger to a halt, bright spots of dizziness dancing in front of my eyes.
Bruce pats me firmly on the back as I hack up black phlegm. ‘It’s just a bit further.’
I wipe my mouth with the back of my hand, tasting the acrid smoke from the church. ‘I should have joined the rugby team with you. All this running is killing me.’ As my breathing slows down, I notice clouds of luminous mist creeping down the ginnel towards us, the air becoming foul with the stench of rotting fish.
‘She’s trying to find us. Don’t let it touch you.’ We start running again, the cold air like shards of ice inside my inflamed throat. The ginnel opens onto the promenade. A bank of mist is rolling in from the sea and cascading over the railings. A tendril grasps at my face, and I jerk away as it coils into a loop. The rows of houses facing the sea are all dark apart from one.
The Dorchester.
‘Why are you bringing me here?’ I stop and back away from him.
‘It’s not what you think. Ruby’s not one of them. She’s here to help us.’
The door opens and Ruby steps out. ‘Hurry!’ The mist surges across the road and we run inside. She slams the door and bolts it. ‘Oh Sam, I should have stopped you. I thought she might leave you both alone.’
‘She’s taken Rachel! You killed her!’ There are shouts from outside and Ruby puts a finger to her lips. She turns off the light just as filaments of luminous mist poke around the crack under the door, caressing the worn welcome mat.
‘Take him downstairs,’ Ruby whispers to Bruce. I shake my head.
‘You have to believe us,’ Bruce says. We’re not going to hurt you.’ The shouts get louder. Mist twines above my foot and Ruby grabs a folded newspaper from the reception desk and swats it. Bruce grasps the top of my arm and I jerk it away.
‘If we don’t hide now,’ he says, ‘they’ll find us.’ I follow him reluctantly into the dining room. He pulls back the rug to reveal a trapdoor set into the floor. There is loud banging on the front door.
‘They’re here,’ Ruby whispers.
Bruce opens the trapdoor and climbs down a creaking aluminium ladder into the darkness. I follow him, almost falling when my foot slips on a rung, and Ruby closes the opening. The square crack of light disappears; she seems to be rolling the rug back over it. Bruce stands in front of me, his chest pressed against mine, his heart hammering. There are muffled voices above us.
‘Where are they?’
‘I haven’t seen them,’ Ruby says.
‘Check upstairs. If they’re here, you know what will happen to you.’
There is the dull thud of footsteps above our heads. I jump as an immense crash thunders around my ears.
‘They’re hardly going to be hiding behind a Welsh dresser,’ Ruby says angrily. ‘That was my best china you clots have broken.’
‘They might have gone back to the train station,’ a voice barks. The footsteps move away from the trapdoor and Bruce breathes a sigh of relief. There is silence for a few moments before the front door slams.
Light suddenly blazes around me and I scrunch my eyes closed.
‘Thanks for the warning,’ Bruce whispers. I am standing in a long rectangular room, a naked lightbulb swinging above me. Two people are standing facing me with their arms folded.
‘So this is the one who’s here to save us,’ says a boy with shaggy sideburns.
The girl glares at me angrily. ‘I doubt that. He’s the reason we’re trapped.’
‘What do you mean?’ I ask.
‘Your bitch of a mother. She was the one who brought us here.’ I realise why they both look familiar. They are two students from the bus crash. I used to stare at their faces in the Book of Remembrance, wondering what their lives had been like before they died. All the victims’ families received a copy bound in blue satin. The last photo in the book was my mother sitting on a park bench wearing a t-shirt under denim dungarees, smiling with her hair tied back. My dad kept it hidden under his bed, but every so often I would sneak a look at it.
‘I don’t understand. You were both killed in France, in the bus with the others.’
‘Is that what people still believe?’ The girl kicks the couch against the wall in frustration. ‘And the rest weren’t killed, they were murdered.’
‘Don’t lash out at him,’ Bruce says. ‘He’s as much a victim as we are.’
‘Were you hiding in here when me and Rachel arrived?’ I ask suspiciously. ‘Did you let them take us?’ I back away towards the stepladder.
‘We only got back to the Dorchester a few hours ago from another hiding place across town,’ Bruce says. ‘As soon as Ruby told us about you both, we made a plan to rescue you.’
‘Why are you all hiding? Can’t you just get on a train and leave?’ The girl laughs loudly, then covers her mouth, looking fearfully at the trapdoor.
‘Don’t you think we’ve tried?’ the boy asks. ‘There’s no escape, like rats in a maze. There were fifteen of us. She’s picked us off one by one.’ The girl starts crying and he puts an arm around her shoulders. He holds out his other hand.
‘I’m Jacob. This is Michelle … Mitch.’ I give him a limp handshake.
Bruce sighs and sprawls onto the couch. ‘How are my parents? They must be so worried.’
‘I don’t know.’
‘But I’ve been missing for months.’
‘You’ve only been gone a few days.’
‘I told you,’ Jacob says.
‘I was hoping it wasn’t true,’ Bruce says, rubbing his temples.
‘You went missing over eight years ago,’ I say to Jacob, ‘but you still look the same.’
‘We’re frozen here. She’s stopped the clock to keep us young and fresh.’
‘How long have you really been here?’
Mitch points to a plastered wall covered with hundreds of tiny scratches in rows and columns. ‘Every month I make a new mark. So more or less ninety years.’ I feel the blood leaving my face. ‘Bet I’m the most sprightly one-hundred-year-old you’ve ever met, right?’
‘Where are the rest of them?’
‘At first they were kind to us, the people in New Innsmouth,’ she says. ‘Then they took us to the church. Chained us up in the cellar below it and Dagona fed on us one by one until some of us managed to escape.’
‘The other survivors,’ Jacob says, ‘after so many years most of them just gave up and let themselves be taken.’
‘Your mother left us here to die.’ Mitch sniffs. ‘Told us she was going to get help.’
‘W
hy has Dagona never found you?’ I ask.
‘Every few days we change location to avoid detection,’ Jacob says, ‘mostly squatting in abandoned buildings.’
‘Which is unfortunately why we just missed you when you came,’ Bruce says. I pinch the bridge of my nose, the floor starting to sway under my feet. ‘Are you ok?’ he asks.
‘Feeling dizzy. Just need some fresh air.’
‘We have to wait for a while in here. Last time they came back,’ Jacob says.
I sit down on the couch and Bruce hands me a can of Coke. Behind his ears I can still see traces of the green body paint he was wearing at the disco.
‘Sorry there’s no booze in it,’ he says.
‘You knew about that?’ The anxiety that was threatening to escalate starts to diminish.
‘Saw you pouring it from your hip flask. I also saw what happened with Terry. I should have punched that prick myself. It feels like a lifetime ago.’
‘How did you get here?’ I ask.
Bruce smiles sheepishly. ‘I was worried about you. After you left the disco, Rachel went to the park and I went to the train station. Thought you might try and run away.’
‘Why did you get on the train?’
He shrugs. ‘I described you to the man at the ticket booth. He told me you’d gone to New Innsmouth.’
‘Like a knight charging on a white steed to rescue you,’ Mitch says. ‘I think he regrets it now.’
‘No,’ Bruce answers. ‘You’re all I’ve been thinking about since I arrived here, wondering if you were safe.’
Pinned on the bare walls of the cellar are dog-eared maps of New Innsmouth. The one closest to me shows a rough circle of crosses surrounding the town, connected with a line of red marker.
‘So why have you not come back to Preston?’
‘That’s as far as we’ve got trying to leave,’ Jacob says, gesturing towards the map with the crosses. ‘You can’t escape New Innsmouth. She keeps us prisoner here. You think you’re leaving, but somehow you’re always turned around and end up walking back the way you came.’
‘And when the mist descends, she’s looking for us,’ Mitch says, ‘trying to worm into our brains and control our minds like the rest of the town.’
‘You don’t seem that shocked about what’s happened,’ Jacob says suspiciously.
‘I would have been shocked a week ago, but after the disco, when I disappeared … well, things got a lot worse.’ I take a swig of Coke, wishing it was laced with vodka, and tell them everything that happened. They sit in silence, Bruce frowning in anger when I describe the torture at Jupiter Hill. We both take turns recounting the events at the church.
‘Do you think your mother, I mean Hastur, was killed by the fire?’ Mitch asks.
‘I don’t know. She healed from bullets like they were from a pea-shooter, so I don’t think being burnt will do anything more than slow her down.’
‘Where is the crystal now?’
‘I must have dropped it when we escaped from the church.’ I look at Bruce, but his face shows no reaction. My jeans are so baggy that Jacob and Mitch can’t see the slight bulge from the crystal in my pocket.
‘What about Rachel?’ I ask. ‘There must be a way of getting her back.’
‘You can’t save her,’ Jacob says. ‘Once Dagona’s taken over someone, they’re as good as dead. We have to kill her. Both of them.’
‘We’re not killing Rachel or his mother,’ Bruce says angrily. ‘Besides, you haven’t managed to kill Dagona for the last ninety years.’
‘Not from lack of trying,’ Jacob says ominously. I reach towards my pocket with the crystal, but Bruce looks at me and makes a surreptitious stop movement with his hand.
There is knocking on the trap door.
‘They’re gone,’ Ruby says, her voice muted. ‘For now.’ The trapdoor squeals open. ‘Anyone fancy a cuppa?’
Chapter 37
We enter the dark dining room and Ruby closes the curtains across the window that faces the promenade and turns on a small chintz lamp. Just before they shut, I see in the distance a bank of luminous mist receding over the sea.
‘Why are you helping me?’ I ask her as we sit at one of the tables. On the plastic tablecloth is the dried tea ring that I left this morning when I was with Rachel. In the centre is a crude eye that I don’t remember making. I rub it away with my sleeve before anyone sees it.
‘I’m not like the others. When the mist goes inside, you change. You become her slave.’
‘So why are you not affected by it?’
‘I don’t know. With some of us there’s something inside she doesn’t like.’
‘And now we have another mouth to feed,’ Mitch says. ‘Better for us if she’d just taken you.’ She starts crying. ‘I can’t stand living like this anymore. If there’s a hell, we’re trapped in it. And now you are too.’
‘You’ve stayed here before,’ Ruby says to me.
‘When?’
‘Lifetimes ago, when we were free, before Dagona came. I can still remember your face. You haven’t changed much, apart from becoming a lanky teenager. Your mum complained that the decor was old fashioned, démodé as she put it. You stayed in the attic, laughing all the time and feeling so grown-up that your parents let you have your own room. Before you left, you gave me that picture.’ She points at a small felt-tip drawing behind a frame next to the shark jaws which I hadn’t noticed. ‘I think you felt bad for what your mum said.’ She takes it off the wall, unclips the back of the frame and hands it to me.
In the picture, the sky is a band of rainbow. Underneath it, a crudely drawn woman with long hair has a sullen expression. Above her is a grinning man with an ice cream quiff floating on a cloud of stars like a superhero. The small figure smiling next to him must be me. I feel a stab of loss about how carefree I must have been then, before anxiety and depression ruined my life. I turn over the picture. In brown felt-tip is written: ‘To my friend Ruby. Thanks for all the porridge. Love Sam.’
‘When did all this begin?’ I ask, gently stroking the felt-tip face of my dad with a finger.
‘It was the night of the earthquake, Halloween 1980. The church just sprouted from the ground. At first I thought it wasn’t real – some elaborate hoax to scare us. We gathered outside, and when the doors opened, that infernal mist came pouring out. Then things started to go bad. Children began to disappear. At first we thought they had just run away, although most of their parents, the ones affected by the mist, didn’t seem bothered. The police did nothing. That’s when I tried to leave with the others, to get help, but she wouldn’t let us.’
‘That was the same night my mother raised Hastur.’
Rituals have a synchronicity.
‘After she’d possessed and used up the New Innsmouth children, she started bringing them from Preston.’
‘And I’m the one who’s responsible for awakening her.’ That one simple action of drawing a picture as a child spiralled into the destruction of a town, perhaps ultimately the whole world, and a knot of guilt pulsates inside me.
‘How can you be responsible for this?’ Ruby asks. I tell them about my mother and me discovering the crystal.
‘You can’t blame yourself,’ she says. ‘Even before Dagona appeared, something felt wrong about New Innsmouth, as though a terrible thing was lying in wait for us, biding its time till it could emerge from its lair. If your mother hadn’t performed the ritual, eventually she would have found a way to break through.’
‘There might be a way out.’ I take the crystal out of my pocket and nervously glance at Jacob and Mitch.
‘You told us you’d lost it,’ Jacob says. ‘Why were you hiding it from us?’
Mitch jerks up from her seat and knocks over her mug. ‘You lying shit! Give it to me!’ I clench my fist around the crystal and hold it to my chest.
/> ‘It’s dangerous.’ She looks ready to fly at me, then changes her mind and sits down. I unfurl my hand and put the crystal on the table, its facets catching the light.
‘You said when you broke the crystal, it sent Hastur back,’ Bruce says. ‘Maybe it will do the same to Dagona.’
‘If I break the crystal, I won’t be able to find a way into the Datum. My dad is still trapped there.’
‘You should hope that he died quickly,’ Mitch says.
‘You really don’t think before you speak,’ Bruce says angrily.
She glares at him. ‘Remind me again why we also saved you.’
‘Both of you shut up,’ Jacob says. ‘We need to make a plan. When you were at Jupiter Hill, you said you transported everyone to Adam’s house.’
‘Not all of them. But I don’t know how I did it. I just remember being angry.’ Mitch snatches the crystal from the table and holds it in front of her face.
‘There are tiny symbols carved inside it,’ she says in fascination. ‘They’re moving, almost as if they’re alive.’
‘Put it down,’ Jacob orders. She blinks and hands it to me, shaking her head as if trying to dislodge something from her mind. As light refracts through the crystal and splinters onto the table, I can see a jagged flaw, a scar running through the centre of it where the two pieces slotted together. If the crystal is damaged again, it will not survive; even now I can hear a low whimper of pain emanating from it.
‘Could you take us out of New Innsmouth?’ she asks. ‘Back to Preston?’ They all stare at me.
‘It could go wrong and I might end up transporting us to the Datum. I was thinking about my dad the last time I teleported. I’m not sure I can focus properly on Preston without thinking of him.’
‘I say give it a go,’ Bruce says. ‘We’d only be moving from one prison to another.’
‘The other place is much worse than this,’ I say, shuddering when I remember its perverse landscape. There is shouting outside and we freeze. The voices fade away.
‘Best hurry,’ Ruby says. ‘The town’s already suspicious of me.’
