by Paul Berry
Mitch wriggles out through the windscreen, still clutching the crystal, her eyes fixed on Rachel. She stands up, gasping with pain, cubes of glass crunching under her shoes. ‘Allow me to leave this town.’
‘And what about your friends?’ Rachel asks, gesturing towards us.
‘Mitch, please. Take us with you,’ Bruce says.
She shakes her head. ‘You can come. But not Sam. He caused all this.’
‘She’s right,’ Rachel says. ‘It if wasn’t for your drawing, I wouldn’t have been awoken from my sleep by your mother. You’d all be safely in your beds right now.’
‘Then no deal,’ Bruce says. The seagulls have begun squawking, their orange-ringed eyes glittering in the moonlight. Mitch staggers away down the promenade.
‘You’re forgetting one thing,’ Rachel says. ‘My pets don’t want to let you leave.’ She winks at the seagulls and one of them launches itself off the railing at Mitch. She screams and raises the crystal in the air, about to smash it down. The seagull flies to her hand and snatches the crystal between its feet. Mitch loses her balance and falls to the road, looking up in horror. The seagull flaps over to Rachel and drops the crystal into her outstretched palm.
‘Time to pay the price,’ Rachel says.
The shrieks of the gulls are almost deafening as they take off and circle above Mitch. She stares at me in hatred. ‘You’re gonna die here too.’
The seagulls swoop down and her head becomes a jostling white mass as she screams and tries to claw them off. Their feathers stain red as they peck and tear her face and neck. She falls forward, the gulls flapping away, the skinless red lump that was her head slapping wetly against the road. A gull flies to Rachel and drops a piece of meat into her other hand.
‘How thoughtful.’ Rachel waves it at us and I realise it’s Mitch’s tongue. ‘She won’t be speaking any more lies.’ She tosses it into the air and a gull grabs it in its beak and gulps it down. The birds start whirling in a shrieking corkscrew above her head. ‘No more games, Sam.’ Threads of mist are gathering around our feet and tugging at our trousers.
‘The museum,’ Bruce whispers. ‘It’s our only chance.’
We bolt down one of the side streets, the shrill cries of the gulls echoing behind us.
‘The key’s under a stone next to the door,’ Bruce says as we reach the entrance in a cobbled courtyard. ‘Ruby put it there in case we needed to hide.’ He gropes around, trying to find the loose cobble. A carpet of glowing mist creeps into the courtyard.
‘Hurry!’ I shout. There is a screech above my head and a gull beats its wings at my face, scratching my cheek with a claw. I swat it away and it slams into a wall, scrabbling to its feet, a furious squall blasting from its beak. It is answered by multiple cries echoing from above.
‘Got it!’ Bruce stabs the key into the lock. I can feel myself being dragged backwards by the mist as ringlets wrap around my hips. Bruce wrenches the door open and pulls me inside. We slam it closed and several squawking thumps reverberate against the wood. The gap under the door glows green, and mist presses against the museum’s thick-paned windows.
‘I don’t know how long it’ll hold up against her,’ he says, pulling a pen torch from his pocket. He shines the narrow beam around. From the ceiling hang the sepulchral bones of the narwhal. Display cases line the walls, one containing taxidermied birds, their wings spread in the pretence of flight. Several of the cases are broken, pieces of broken pottery and scrimshaw carvings scattered across the floor.
I notice scratch marks on the inside of the door. ‘Shine the torch on this.’ He traces the beam across the door. It looks as though something was trying to claw its way out.
‘Oh fuck.’ I notice a human fingernail embedded in the wood. At the far end of the museum there is a dark mound. I look at Bruce and he nods and points the light at it. At first I think it’s a giant pile of misshapen shop dummies, but as my eyes adjust I realise what they are. Bodies, maybe twenty or thirty, contorted into crooked angles, their lifeless faces open-mouthed in terror. I recognise one of them. Baltus, his dead eyes looking upwards, his throat ripped open. Twisted around him is the body of the old woman I met with Rachel outside the museum, her jaw hanging in a silent scream.
There is rattling sound above our heads like a discordant wind chime. The bones of the narwhal are banging together. One of its ribs smashes to the floor and we both jump back. A black shape unfolds like a spider from the shadows of its cavernous ribcage. It drops to the floor and stands upright.
‘I’ve been expecting you,’ my mother says. ‘Surprised to see me so furbished again?’ She gestures towards the pile of bodies. ‘It was very rude of you to set me on fire. Unfortunately for them, I was extremely hungry, but they finally did something useful.’ Her face is completely healed, the shirt she is wearing rust-red with blood. ‘Now, where were we?’ Bruce pulls out his knife. ‘Don’t be a hero, boy. I’d kill you before you even nicked me.’
The door starts buckling inwards as though some vast bulk is pressing against it, the mechanism around the lock squealing. Mist starts creeping under the gap and through the keyhole.
‘Looks like we have a visitor,’ she says. The wood splits and a stream of mist gushes in. The door shatters and I shield my face, splinters spattering the backs of my hands.
My mother clicks her fingers and the oil lamps hanging from the rafters sputter into life, filling the museum with jaundiced light. Rachel’s silhouette is framed by the broken door. She brushes debris from her clothes and steps through, the mist receding. Her hair has turned completely silver.
She holds out the crystal. ‘Is this what you’re looking for, brother?’
‘Give it to me.’
Rachel laughs. ‘Is that the limit of your bargaining power?’
‘Give it to me or be destroyed.’
‘Now that sounds like my brother.’
Bruce is grasping my hand tightly, and I feel his pulse thrumming furiously in his wrist.
‘You are weak, sister,’ my mother says, ‘depleted from your parlour tricks.’
‘Still stronger than you.’
‘Are you so sure? I made the light of day recede. I only grow stronger the longer I’m here.’ She takes a step forward and Rachel draws back slightly. ‘You need the crystal’s power as much as me. We can use it to finally be free.’
‘Have you learned nothing? I don’t need its power to awaken me. Just his,’ she says, staring at me. ‘But it does have one innate power. To send you back.’
‘Destroy it and we’ll both be returned to our prisons.’
‘How can it send me back if I’m already here? This is merely the key to your prison.’ My mother leaps forward, claws bristling from her fingers, her lips pulled back over dagger teeth.
Rachel crouches down and slams the crystal against the stone floor.
A thunder-crack rips through the air and the floor shakes under us. I hear the crystal’s dying scream as it shatters, the pieces spreading outwards in a glittering ring.
‘What have you done?’ my mother shouts. There is a tearing sound under the floor as a fissure starts opening, and a cold wind blasts out from it. She is dragged backwards towards it as though pulled by invisible hands. She falls to the floor, her claws gouging furrows as she slides across the stone.
‘Your father is dead when I return,’ she rasps at me as her legs are sucked into the vent.
‘I have to go with her!’ I shout to Bruce above the noise of the howling wind. He clutches my shoulders.
‘Then I’m coming with you!’
‘I can’t let you do that.’ I shove him with all my strength, and he topples over one of the broken display cases.
One arm protrudes from the fissure as my mother desperately clings to a crack between the flags. Her other hand appears and grips the floor as she slowly starts to pull herself out. Rachel steps over.
I hook my arm around Rachel’s waist.
She looks at me in confusion. ‘What are you doing?’
I jump and drag her screaming into the chasm.
As we tumble through a black void, I see a sliver of light disappear above me as the fissure closes, the sound of Bruce shouting my name abruptly cut off.
Chapter 41
I open my eyes.
I’m lying on my bed staring up at the swirls of glow-in-the-dark stars stuck to the ceiling. For a brief moment I think I’m back home, but the constellations are wrong, as though someone has copied them imprecisely, an extra star shining in Orion’s belt. I switch on the lamp and get up.
My room looks the same, the comforting rows of books and videos lining the walls. I run my fingers along them. The titles on the book spines are different, and I pull one out.
You Are Always Alone.
The cover shows me standing next to a grave. On the headstone is my dad’s name. ‘Stephen Black RIP. Killed by a deviant son.’ I hurl it against the wall.
Something bangs against the bedroom door, breathing heavily.
‘Dad?’ There is a dry chuckle. I run to the window and pull back the curtains.
All I can see outside is a yawning black gulf.
There is another crash behind the door, strong enough to split the wood. I open the window and feel around underneath for the drainpipe. The door crashes to the floor as I grasp the pipe and lever myself over the windowsill. I look back into the bedroom and see Mr Hewitt grinning at me, a pair of scissors jutting from his neck, his face festering with rot.
‘How about another kiss?’ he mumbles, his lips spitting open.
I start climbing down, skinning my knuckles against the bricks. Decaying hands reach through the window and grab a clump of hair. I cry out and let go, weightless for a moment before I start falling. My back hits the grass and the wind is knocked out of me. As I gasp for breath, I see the garden stretching out before me.
Sitting on the lawn a few feet away, Rachel is rocking backwards and forwards, crying in the anaemic moonlight.
She stops and lifts her head to look at me. ‘Are we in hell?’ I stagger to my feet, my back spasming with pain, and kneel down next to her.
‘Rachel, is that really you?’ Her pupils are still rectangular like the eyes of an octopus.
She nods. ‘I can hear her screaming inside my head, Sam. She’s trying to get control of me again.’
‘She’s cut off from New Innsmouth. There’s nothing for her to draw power from.’
‘Why has Hastur not killed us?’
‘He still needs me, otherwise he’s trapped in the Datum with us.’ Rachel starts gagging as I help her to stand, her throat bulging outwards in nodules as though fingers are trying to push through the skin.
‘Fucking leave me alone!’ Rachel screams, hitting her head. Her throat returns to normal. ‘I don’t know how much longer I can keep her out.’
‘Just hold on a bit more. Once we find my dad we’ll get out of here … somehow.’
Or we might remain trapped here forever, slowly mutating into some variant of the creatures that were locked in the cells of Jupiter Hill.
A section of fence that separates the garden from the neighbours shudders and slams onto the grass.
In front of us is the entrance to the maze.
‘He wants us to go in there,’ I say.
A screech echoes from my bedroom window. I turn around and see a decaying figure slowly climbing down the drainpipe.
‘I forgot to mention, Mr Hewitt is also here.’
‘I think we should take our chances in the maze.’
Lying on the grass next to the fallen section of fence is a backpack, the same one I usually take to college. I reach inside and pull out a paint can. I shake it and spray a stream into the air. I push it back inside, thread my arms through the straps and we walk through the gap in the fence.
Our feet crunch on the grass, and I look down to see frozen snow.
‘Sam, look.’
I turn around. The house has disappeared and a snow-covered field stretches endlessly into the darkness.
‘I guess we should head to the centre of the maze,’ I say apprehensively.
‘Is any of this real?’ Rachel asks. ‘Can this place really hurt us?’
‘Yes. I think it wants to.’ Lightning forks crackle through the clouds and thunder makes the fillings in my teeth vibrate. A red star blinks in the sky, the same one I saw above Adam’s house.
‘The Datum is like a horror film,’ I say. ‘It likes us being scared.’
‘It’s working.’
I take Rachel’s hand and we enter the maze. The walls of the entrance rustle closed behind us, trapping us inside.
Every step feels like we’re walking into the snaggled jaws of a monster about to snap shut.
After a few turns, we reach the centre. The gazebo is rusted through with holes, as though it has been submerged for a few months in sea water.
Someone is sitting on the rotted bench under it.
The figure stands up and steps out of the shadows. He looks like me, except he is flickering as though a film is being projected onto a body-shaped black screen. In his hand is a broken piece of bottle.
‘Hello, Sam,’ he says, his voice like a crackly recording. I take a step forwards and he backs away nervously. Within the darkness of his body I can see a speck of light darting around.
‘What is he?’ Rachel asks.
‘He’s the vampire that was inside me.’
‘But isn’t he still Hastur, a part of him?’
‘He still has a part of me inside him. It must have been torn out when the crystal sent him back at Adam’s house.’ In my brain I feel a dull itch from the tiny hole created by the missing piece.
‘Why are you here?’ I ask. He holds out the piece of glass.
‘I need to escape this place. You can help me. I can’t do it myself.’
‘You want me to kill you?’
He nods. ‘I’ve always been here. Always alone. I can’t find the way out.’ He drops to his knees, sobbing.
‘Sam, don’t go near him,’ Rachel says, but I ignore her and kneel down beside him. I take the glass, and he holds out his arm and closes his eyes.
I toss the shard into a maze hedge and wrap my arms around his shoulders.
‘I’ve missed you.’
He freezes and then relaxes into my embrace. ‘Do you want me to go back inside you?’
I shake my head. ‘No, not anymore. I think I’ll be ok on my own, and so will you. Come with us.’ He touches my face and smiles sadly. ‘He’ll never let us go.’
A black tentacle snakes around his waist and he is dragged backwards into the air.
Behind a hedge wall is an amorphous mass of writhing tentacles, and he is pulled into its massive folds of black flesh. It bursts through the leaves, smashing apart the gazebo, and jerkily rises up on its haunches. I grab Rachel’s arm just as a tentacle lashes itself to her neck, more tentacles encircling her arms and legs.
‘Run,’ she croaks. I try to pull them off, but they wrap around tighter.
‘Let her go!’ I shout.
It roars wetly and pulls her into its bloated body. A tentacle whip-snaps the air in front of my face.
I run through the gap in the hedge opposite the ruined gazebo and stumble down a path as hedge branches reach out and claw my forehead. All around, I can hear the maze being ripped up, clods of earth showering down. I trip over a root and collapse, my wrists jarring from the impact.
There is a sharp hoot.
Perched on top of the hedge next to me is Helsing.
He takes off and fli
es around my head and I wrench myself up. The black mass appears at the end of the path and tumbles towards me, hedge walls splayed outwards from its bulk. Helsing flaps his wings against my face and disappears left down a passageway. I chase after him, zigzagging down leafy corridors, my vision blurring from the blood running into my eyes. Not far behind, I hear the thing bellowing in fury as it pursues me.
‘Slow down!’ I shout. Helsing flies around a corner and I stumble over from exhaustion. I lie supine on the ground, unable to move, waiting for the thing to rip me apart as the noise of its approach grows louder, the ground thumping against my back.
Feathers thrash against my face and Helsing squawks loudly, tugging on my sleeve and nipping my hands. He flies through an opening in the hedge.
I take a ragged breath, drawing on my last reserves of energy, and stand up, sprinting after him just as something moist slithers against the back of my neck.
I’m in front of Adam’s house, and I jerk to a halt and look around.
The maze has vanished.
Surrounding the garden is the same tall hedge I walked through when I first came here. The driveway stretches to the pillared door, and crouched on the lawn is the dragon topiary. Helsing lands on my shoulder, digging his talons into the strap of the backpack. The gravel crunches as I walk to the entrance.
As I approach the dragon, two trails of smoke drift up from its snout and the sides of its chest expand and contract. I stop next to it.
‘If you’re going to try and eat me, you might as well do it now.’ Its tail starts to uncurl and Helsing squawks angrily. It lets out a grumbling breath and wraps its tail back around its body.
I reach the front door and gently stroke Helsing’s wing.
‘Maybe you should leave while you still can,’ I say, craning my neck to look at him. He rotates his head effortlessly and stares back, resolutely refusing to move.
‘Don’t say I didn’t warn you. Though I need all the help I can get.’ I grasp the handle. ‘Are you sure you want to come in with me? Last chance.’ I push open the door.
The hallway is identical to the one I stepped through a week ago, the chandelier casting fractal light on the gold-veined marble floor.
