Sam Black Shadow

by Paul Berry

  ‘Do you want me to do it here?’ I ask.

  ‘No better place or time,’ Jacob says excitedly.

  ‘We’re finally going home,’ Mitch says, squeezing his hand.

  ‘I believe in you, Sam,’ Bruce says.

  I stare into the crystal. Immediately it transforms into a polyhedron. Mitch gasps. I visualise the maze, the pitted metal of the rusted gazebo, and smell the verdant tang of the hedges as I saunter though them. The facets realign, then tilt to reflect the centre of the maze. The mugs on the table start vibrating.

  ‘It’s working,’ Bruce whispers.

  The kitchen grows dark as the lamp dims, the illumination from the crystal casting everyone’s faces with an unearthly glow.

  I try to project us, but there is a discordant laugh.

  Sitting on the bench next to the gazebo is Rachel, waggling her finger at me. Tentacles shoot from the ground and surround us both with an undulating wall.

  She stands up and walks towards me. ‘Make yourselves comfortable. I’ve heard the Dorchester is lovely at this time of year.’ I shift my attention to my dad and the Datum, but the mass of tentacles occludes my mind. ‘No escape to that place either.’

  She puts her hands around my neck and starts squeezing.

  ‘Let go of it!’ Bruce shouts. I feel the crystal being pulled from my hand. Rachel disappears and I’m back in the kitchen, coughing and clutching my throat.

  ‘I can’t break through,’ I say. ‘And now she knows we’re here.’ Ruby hands me a glass of water, which I gulp down.

  ‘What about the other place, the one where your father is?’ Bruce asks.

  I shake my head. ‘She’s also blocking that way.’ Jacob and Mitch nod at each other.

  ‘Everyone get their stuff,’ Jacob says. ‘We’re leaving.’

  ‘I’m staying here,’ Ruby says. ‘Maybe I can delay them.’

  ‘The hell you are,’ Bruce says. ‘You’re coming with us.’

  ‘Let me do something right for once.’

  ‘But they’ll kill you. Or something worse.’

  ‘I’m a tough old bird. It’ll take more than angry townsfolk with pitchforks to get rid of me.’

  ‘Where are we going?’ I ask.

  ‘It’s a surprise, a secret project,’ Mitch says. ‘It might be our only escape.’ We go into the living room and Mitch flings open the trap door and disappears through it with Jacob. Ruby runs into the kitchen and reappears a few moments later with a canvas shopping bag.

  ‘In case you get hungry.’

  Bruce takes it and kisses her cheek. ‘Thanks. For everything. Are you sure you want to stay here?’

  ‘Don’t worry about me. Take care of him,’ she says, nodding towards me.

  ‘I think he’ll be the one taking care of me,’ he says.

  Jacob climbs out of the cellar, Mitch coming after him, both of them wearing backpacks.

  ‘What are you taking?’ I ask.

  ‘Everything we’ll need for fight or flight,’ Mitch says.

  Ruby leads us through the kitchen to the back door. ‘I’ll see you all soon.’ She draws back the iron bolt and slowly pulls the door handle, the rusty hinges squealing. It opens directly into a mossy cobbled alley. Jacob takes the lead.

  ‘All I seem to be doing is running away from something horrible,’ I say to Bruce. There are shouts behind us from the hotel and the crashing sounds of furniture being turned over.

  ‘Back again?’ Ruby shouts.

  ‘They’ve got her,’ Bruce says. A gunshot rings out and we all simultaneously freeze, the wheeze of our breaths the only sound. He drops the canvas bag and two apples roll out. ‘We have to go back. She might be hurt.’

  A bullet ricochets off a cobble near my foot. The taxi driver steps out of the back door.

  ‘There’s nowhere left to run, fledglings,’ he says, raising the gun and walking towards us. Two more of the townspeople follow him. One of the men is carrying a long trident, its shaft scraping metallically across the cobbles, and the other slings a fishing net over his back.

  ‘Where’s Ruby?’ Jacob asks. The taxi driver points two fingers against his head and trigger-cocks his thumb.

  ‘You murdering fucker!’ Mitch spits.

  ‘This will be much easier if you all come willingly.’ We slowly back away. ‘Don’t take another step.’ He raises the gun and squeezes the trigger. I step in front of Bruce. There is a hollow click.

  ‘You should’ve checked your ammo,’ Jacob says. We bolt down the alley and I expect any moment for the trident to sink between my shoulder blades. After several turns, the hungry shouts of the men grow faint, and we press ourselves into the recess of an abandoned shop doorway. Crashes and shouts of frustration echo around us as though the town is being torn apart.

  ‘Where can we hide?’ I ask. ‘They’ll find us … she’ll find us.’

  ‘We’ve done this a thousand times before,’ Jacob says. ‘Bruce, you’re coming with me. Sam with Mitch.’

  ‘He’s safer with me,’ Bruce says.

  ‘Don’t worry, lover,’ Mitch says. ‘I’ll keep him safe.’ I’m about to say I can take care of myself when a voice that sounds like Rachel but amplified with animalistic rage thunders across the sky.

  ‘Find them!’

  ‘She sounds angry,’ Jacob says. ‘Bruce and I will take the graveyard route.’

  ‘Follow me,’ Mitch says, tugging my jacket. ‘We get to take the scenic route through the woods.’

  ‘Be careful,’ Bruce says.

  ‘We’ll race you there,’ Mitch says.

  We separate and I follow Mitch down roads and alleys, thankful we’re not running anymore.

  As we go down Arkham Street, a crowd with torches turns the corner and Mitch pulls me into the shadows of a doorway. We crouch down until they have walked past, watching the dimming lights of their torches bobbing down the road, tangled wreaths of mist hovering around their faces.

  ‘She’s got the whole damn town looking for us tonight,’ Mitch whispers.

  ‘How have you managed to survive this long?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Mitch says sadly. ‘Just kept hoping one day we’d find a way out. Hope has been the only thing that’s kept me going all these years.’

  ‘Do you miss your friends, your family?’

  ‘I can’t remember their faces. They’re just vague smudges. I don’t even have an identity anymore. All I am now is New Innsmouth.’

  ‘I know your mum. She works at the gallery in Preston. My dad bought a painting from her once. I think he had a crush on her; she’s very beautiful. Every year she joins the other parents to lay flowers for you at the Stone of Remembrance.’ She squeezes my wrist.

  ‘Thank you for that.’

  ‘I see her sometimes in the park taking Max for a walk.’

  ‘Max is still alive?’ She is smiling and crying softly. ‘God, I miss that dumb dog. I’m sorry your mum turned out to be an evil disappointment.’

  ‘She’s still alive. I suppose that’s worth something.’ Is it worth something? My mother is responsible for the deaths of ten people and probably more at Jupiter Hill, sacrificed for her obsession with the Datum. It would have been better for the world if she had stayed dead.

  ‘I saw someone on the promenade the night we arrived,’ I say. ‘They jumped into the sea.’

  ‘Being trapped in this town for eternity pushes you over the edge. I tried to check out years ago.’ She shows me the scar on her wrist. ‘I kinda lost hope for a while, but I’m glad it didn’t work. Dagona is the one’s that’s gonna bleed.’

  ‘I lost hope myself recently. In some ironic way, this nightmare has brought me back.’

  ‘Sometimes, it takes a nightmare to end a nightmare. Life is indeed an enigmatic bitch.’ The lights from the torches have disappeared
, and I try to stand up, but Mitch pushes down on my shoulder.

  ‘Wait for a moment longer.’ There are faint sounds of doors being smashed open.

  ‘Dagona’s mist … is that why everyone’s trying to kill us?

  ‘When you’re infected by it, your mind is hers. Although some manage to fight back. More have drowned themselves recently. She must be losing her power.’

  ‘Is there any way to save Rachel?’

  ‘I don’t know. Nobody has ever survived her inhabitancy.’

  ‘What about if Dagona was forced to leave her – evicted, so to speak?’

  ‘It might work. After spending ninety years in this town of monsters and magic, anything is possible.’

  When the sounds of destruction disappear, we move from the doorway towards an overgrown driveway. It leads up to a house that looks like the one from The Amityville Horror except the two windows under the roof staring down are boarded shut. We go round to the back garden, which borders the edge of a wood.

  I freeze.

  In the garden, twisted and overgrown, is the topiary of a dragon.

  Chapter 38

  ‘We shouldn’t have come this way,’ I say.

  ‘Relax,’ Mitch says. ‘It’s just a glorified hedge.’ I stare at it closely, straining to see if its leaves and branches are about to twitch into life.

  She looks at her watch. ‘It’s time for the diversion.’

  ‘Diversion?’

  There is a high-pitched squeal as bright light tears across the sky and explodes into a ball of sparks.

  ‘The last of the fireworks,’ she says.

  ‘That’s going to distract her?’

  ‘It drives her mist crazy and she can’t locate us.’ A rocket screams across the moon and bursts into a psychedelic nebula. What I first think are clouds illuminated by moonlight start twisting in the sky like plaited snakes. Dagona’s mist. Another firework detonates into a neon chrysanthemum and the mist surges towards it, writhing around the fading afterglow.

  ‘For all her power,’ Mitch says, ‘essentially she’s just another dumb animal blindly reacting to stimuli.’ There is silence. ‘That’s the end of tonight’s celebration.’

  As we pass the topiary I grab Mitch’s arm, looking at it fearfully. ‘Be careful. Sometimes fairy tales come to life.’ She reaches out her hand and ruffles the leaves of its bushy head.

  ‘Nothing’s going to wake this beast up.’

  We enter the woods and I follow her down serpentine paths dappled with moonlight, convinced the dragon will suddenly swoop down and spear us with its branch fangs.

  We reach a hedge wall and I hesitate. It looks identical to the one that led to Adam’s house, and I have a fleeting sensation that I’m still trapped there and this whole thing is just an illusion created by the Datum.

  She looks at me, puzzled. ‘What’s wrong?’

  I shiver. ‘Just a touch of synchronicity.’

  She rummages through her backpack, pulls out a knife and hands it to me. ‘If I turn into a mist zombie, I want you to kill me.’ She sees me looking at her uncomfortably. ‘I mean it. If I ever turn into one of that bitch’s slaves, you have permission to skewer me.’

  ‘I’m glad our friendship has progressed to stabbing.’ She laughs and disappears into the hedge.

  I slide the knife behind my belt and follow her through the gap into an overgrown garden that surrounds the back of a bungalow with a collapsed chimney. The sky is starting to burn a dirty sienna with tangled streaks of pink.

  ‘The sun’s rising,’ Mitch says. We circumvent the house and follow the driveway down to a road which is cracked and tangled with weeds. ‘We’re nearly there. The big surprise awaits.’

  Leading off the road is a gravel path bordered by elm trees. At the end, behind mesh fencing, is a garage, the outside painted dark green, almost vanishing into the surrounding woods.

  ‘The surprise is inside?’ I ask apprehensively, fingering the handle of the knife as we walk towards it. The corrugated shutter clatters open. Standing behind it are Jacob and Bruce.

  ‘What took you so long?’ Jacob asks. ‘Were you showing off and taking him on a guided tour?’ I look perplexed as Bruce grins at me.

  ‘Don’t worry,’ Mitch says, ‘they’re not the surprise I promised. Look behind them.’

  Inside the garage is a minibus, its windscreen cracked. Emblazoned across the bonnet are the three interlocked snakes of the Vega College emblem.

  ‘Is that the bus you came in all those years ago?’ I ask. The bus my mother had driven them in to their doom.

  ‘The very same,’ Mitch says, her eyes twinkling with pride. ‘She abandoned it on the promenade, but we managed to salvage it.’ Jacob closes the shutter behind us while Bruce turns on oil lamps dotted around the metal shelves.

  ‘Someone from the town had taken out the engine,’ Jacob says. ‘Over a few months we pushed it here in stages, hiding it after each time, praying they wouldn’t discover it. Then a few years ago we found the engine.’ I rub my hand over the logo, trying to feel a spark of connection with the life that I’ve left behind.

  ‘Can I look inside?’ I ask.

  ‘Be my guest.’ I take the knife from my belt and give it back to Mitch, afraid it will stab my leg. I slide open the passenger door and duck my head as I climb in. The bus looks bigger inside, the twin rows of seats covered in dirty beige corduroy. I sit in the driver’s seat and stare through the windscreen at the garage. Bruce waves at me and I feel butterflies in my stomach.

  I flip open the glove compartment. Under an empty cigarette carton and cellophane sweet wrappers is a photo. I pull it out and blow the dust from it. In the picture, my dad has the crook of his arm around my neck and is kissing my head. My face is wrinkled in feigned disgust, but I’m grinning at the same time. My mother must have taken it with her when she drove the bus here. Was she thinking about me even when she was taking them to be sacrificed? I slip the photo back in and close the compartment. Maybe she didn’t realise what she was doing, compelled by the corruption that had infested her body or the threats of the Syncret. But then why did she disappear afterwards and let the police concoct a lie about a crash? I shimmy out of the bus and bang the door closed.

  ‘Why did you take it?’ I ask.

  ‘It’s just a theory,’ Mitch says. ‘If Dagona allowed something this size to enter New Innsmouth, maybe it still possesses enough attraction to return us back, like the opposite poles of two magnets pulling each other together.’

  ‘It just needs a few more repairs, then it’s good to go,’ Bruce says, patting the bonnet.

  ‘How did you learn to replace an engine?’

  ‘When you’ve lived here as long as us,’ Mitch says, ‘you can become an expert at anything.’

  Their theory might work, but I remember the way Dagona stopped me from leaving when I projected my mind into the maze. Her influence over New Innsmouth is ubiquitous and all-seeing; even something as hefty as a bus might not be strong enough to resist her.

  ‘I have an idea that might help,’ I say. ‘Dagona keeps everyone trapped here with some kind of spell or enchantment that surrounds the town. Those symbols in the crystal might hold the key to breaking through.’ I stare at the bus. ‘If we paint them on, they might supercharge it and allow us to escape.’

  ‘That might work,’ Mitch says.

  ‘Then if we get up enough speed,’ Jacob says, ‘we can rip apart her fucking tentacles.’

  ‘Have you ever tried the station?’ I ask. ‘Just getting on the train when it was leaving?’

  ‘One time,’ Jacob says. ‘We had the idea for months, sneaking there every night until the train eventually arrived. The doors opened and we tried jumping in.’

  ‘Did you get inside?’

  ‘She’d lashed it to the same curse as the town and we ended up cras
hing into the ticket office.’

  ‘I noticed the destruction when I arrived,’ I say.

  ‘We tried saving the boy that got off, but she claimed him like all the others.’

  ‘This time we’re going to escape,’ Mitch says excitedly. ‘It’s finally gonna happen!’

  ‘And Rachel?’ Bruce asks. ‘How can we save her? If there was only some way of getting Dagona out.’

  ‘Maybe some of the books in the library at Jupiter Hill survived the fire. I could find a ritual in one that can expel her.’ I take the crystal out of my pocket. ‘Let’s get this over with.’ Mitch hunts around the garage and finds a scrap of notepaper and a biro.

  ‘Do you want us to leave you alone in here?’ Jacob asks.

  ‘Actually, I’d prefer you stayed. In case something goes wrong.’

  Bruce squeezes my shoulder. ‘Be careful.’

  I stare into the crystal and think about being back at home in Preston, sitting in the lounge and watching horror films with my dad. I hold the symbol configuration in my mind as it wriggles to escape like maggots being crushed between my palms. In the periphery of the symbols I can see the black tentacles of Dagona meshing together to stop me from teleporting. I kneel on the floor and scrawl down about six symbols.

  ‘Sam, your nose,’ Bruce says. Blood drips from the tip and splatters onto the concrete. I break contact with the crystal and wipe streaks of blood across my sleeve.

  Bruce kneels down beside me. ‘Lean your head forwards.’ He gently pinches the bridge of my nose, staring into my eyes while Jacob and Mitch carry on tinkering with the engine. ‘We never got round to watching a horror film together. Why did you never invite me to your house?’

  ‘I wanted to but I was afraid you didn’t like me. You know, in that way.’

  ‘What way is that?’ he asks, frowning. My heart drops.

  ‘I’m sorry, I just thought you were … that you liked the same things I did.’ He grins and gently kisses the tip of my nose.

  ‘I’m kidding, you mug.’ He removes his fingers and strokes my jaw. ‘I’d better get back to work before the gruesome twosome start complaining.’ We stand up and he kisses me before going back to the bus.