The Angel who comes back is a changed woman. She looks more like the old Angela. She wears the drabbest of her long, swinging dresses and ties her hair back in a tight, unforgiving pony-tail. Her face is pale, and she moves slowly, as if in pain. I sit with her, helpless, my need to help her like a hot ache inside me. She sits on her bench, dully, and people avoid her eyes. I make tea, bring over food. Once I brought out her angel cards to her, but she turned her face away. Later I find them scattered on the grass like cardboard flowers.
Then she starts walking. At first I am relieved. Her face is brighter; her colour is almost back to normal. Then she goes away for longer and longer. She walks all evening. Once she stays away all night. I am worried. Who can I tell? My mother still pretends Angel doesn’t exist. My father is only concerned with his medicine, his pain, his comfort; his world is the few square metres of bedroom. Angel becomes stranger. She is still walking. She starts to forget things. She goes to the shop barefoot and leaves her groceries behind. She cries in her front garden. Mrs Healy from the butcher’s saw her wander out of her house ‘in her UNDERWEAR’ she mouths silently to me across the counter. Angel has gone strange, like turned milk. Fey.
So I follow her. What other choice do I have? She walks around the village and up the hill to where the big fort is. I see the dark circle of trees close around her and feel a flicker of fear. I’ve never gone into the fort myself; I’ve always been warned away from it. Then I notice, she has stopped beside it, and is kneeling on the ground at the cillini.
At first she doesn’t see me; she is humming, and pulling up weeds around the tiny mounds of earth, the small stones. I call to her lightly. ‘Angel.’ She turns to me and smiles, a small, bright smile. I kneel down beside her.
‘What are you doing here?’ My voice is soft. I put a hand on her arm. She wriggles her arm away from my touch.
‘Visiting the babies.’
I pause. She smiles again. Her eyes seem bright blue in the twilight. ‘The poor babies,’ she says quietly. ‘I could never believe they went to Purgatory. Do you know that before Purgatory was invented, they believed that unbaptised babies went to hell. Imagine?’ Her voice is still low, but it has begun to quicken. ‘I think about him every day, you know. Every day. This is the only place I can come to where I feel at peace.’
There are tears in my eyes. She draws a quavering breath. ‘All these babies. Buried at the fort. People wanted to forget them, you know, they wanted to hide them in a forbidden place, where no-one would find them’. She is crying loudly now, long, trembling sobs. ‘But I can hear them! They tell me he’s alive. He’s not in Purgatory.’ I hug her head to my chest. I feel her thin hands grab at my arms.
And in the distance, the sound of a silvery, low laugh.
Of course I tell her not to go back. Of course she does. She is getting stranger. Her hair, always unkempt, is now almost green with matted leaves and pieces of grass. She doesn’t sit on her bench anymore, but moves restlessly, like a hummingbird around her small garden, waiting for evening, to start her walk. I am standing outside her gate one afternoon, with a bag of milk and bread and fruit, simple things to persuade her to eat, when my mother stops by. She looks at me, and then at Angel, moving around, distracted, pulling leaves off bushes. ‘Don’t.’ she says softly. ‘Leave her be. She’s away with the fairies, God love her.’ I am startled by the uncharacteristic kindness of her tone. She shakes her head briskly. ‘I’ll start a novena for her. But she’s in a bad way.’ I nod. I know.
She goes out at Halloween. I try and reason with her, but she’s not listening.
‘You need to stay in! See a doctor! Eat something!’ I plead. Her eyes are blue and uncaring, like flat stones. When I put an arm out to stop her, her hands scrabble at me, her fingers are bent and hard like bone claws. She pushes me off and leaves. I let her go, angry, and start sweeping her floor, jerking the brush in hard, irritated strokes. When I have swept all the floors, I stop. I need to go after her, I realise. She is in no fit state to wander about. I have no idea when she last ate, or slept.
It is a while before I find her. The October night is velvet-dark, the sky a smooth navy, the grass a dense black. She is back in the cillini again. I can just make out her stooping figure among the graves. She is singing an unfamiliar song, her head bobbing about. I draw an exasperated breath. It is cold, and I have forgotten my cardigan. I rub the hard, pebbled gooseflesh on the arms and wait for her to finish her rituals.
Then everything happens at once. The moon gleams from behind a cloud, lighting the hill with a pearly glow. There is the sudden loud, metal clap of a bell, again, and again. It is the old village church bell, I realise, ringing in midnight. I stretch my arm out towards Angel, when the ground seems to move under my feet. I fall heavily, and hit the ground awkwardly, one leg bent beneath me. A flash of pain sears my ankle, I try and get up and fall again. And then I see her. Angel is staggering too. She is being pulled to left and right. The ground swarms with tiny figures that drag her down and climb over her; there are more and more of them, they swarm over her. I see her mouth open once, then she is gone, overcome, taken.
I could have stopped her going, but I didn’t. I needn’t have followed her, but I did. I couldn’t do anything, so I didn’t try. Or so I tell myself, but that doesn’t mean I don’t dream about it, late at night, when it’s dark. I see her fall beneath their dark little bodies, and hear that soft, silver laughter, just before I wake.
Katabasis
K T Davies
From: Tales of the Mouse and Minotaur
Lost in the timeless place between sleep and wakefulness, the fibrillation of my heart and the rhythmic throb of Persephone’s engines became as one. In that undying moment, I neither knew, nor cared where I began and the ship ended. I was content and might have lain there forever, swaddled in the hammer-blow heartbeat of the engines, but for the intrusion of Miss Helen Carrington.
Like wreckage drifting after a storm, a fragment of song washed against the edge of my consciousness and insinuated itself between the beats of Persephone’s iron heart. ‘I’m dreaming dreams; I’m scheming schemes…’
The Aurolese Phones in my helmet amplified the scratches on the recording. Hair’s breadth blemishes etched on the disc crackled like fire and filled the silences of the song with menace. It was perhaps these imperfections more than Miss Carrington’s singing which drove me from slumber. Whatever the cause, I opened my eyes, and saw red.
The ruby lenses of my goggles bathed the corridor in deepening shades of scarlet. Against all instinct, I lay still and waited for my blurred vision to clear and the coiled serpents poised above me to resolve into harmless ducting. Beneath me, the filigree deck plates vibrated in time to the thunder of Persephone’s engines.
Until today, the sound of Harland and Wolff’s hard labour had always been a comfort to me, the steady turn of pistons a mark of safety, out here beyond the edge of the sky, but not today. Today there was disharmony in the cadence, a stammer in the beat. The ship shuddered, breaking my trance. With sickening clarity, I recalled the moments before we were hit.
Blaring Klaxons silenced the locker room chaff and caused an ecstasy of anguished fumbling. I was an old hand, I’d seen more than one breach in my time so I did not freeze when the alarm rattled my bones and stilled all thought with thunder.
As lighting arced from the overburdened capacitors, and melting rigging fell upon the hull as burning rain, my hands worked through knots and buckles, attached air hoses and adjusted pressure. I stifled a curse when I glanced from a porthole and saw spectral tendrils snake from the Hades Web. Air was now more precious than rubies. I braced as aetheric energy lashed our ship, scorched the hull and seeded death in the hearts of every unprotected soul within the vessel. Persephone spun across the sky, dragging a tail of cold fire in her wake. I was knocked from my feet by the force of the assault. I saw stars before the world receded into darkness amid the fury
and terror of death.
‘I’m building castles high. They’re born anew. Their days are few…’
The siren’s song drew me back to the present. The Klaxons had stopped; the screaming had stopped. The only thing I could hear was the sound of my breathing and the tick of the pressure gauge on my air tanks. I lay beneath the red rimmed glow of running lights, reluctant to move. I was safe here, cocooned within my suit, safe from the gelid touch of aether, and the cold reality of death. Nothing living survived the touch of raw aether and so many suits still hung in the lockers, each one proof of a life that had been lost.
‘Tie on tight, Cho.’ Chief McAllister would say while chewing on his unlit pipe. ‘That suit’s worth more than you is; the company would hate to lose it out there, so tie on hard, and climb well.’ The memory hit me, cold and sharp as the sting of aether. I had to get up, or I would die here.
I was sore and my skyclimbing suit was heavy. It was made to be worn outside, not within the confines of the ship’s narrow passageways. Made of triple-saturated, vulcanized rubber and lined with sheepskin, it was designed to withstand the fatal cold of the tropopause not negotiate wreckage strewn corridors. So it was with some difficulty that I clambered to my feet. I was grateful to be alive when so many had perished, but a swell of anger rose within me when I saw the extent of the destruction which surrounded me— friend and enemy alike, lay cold and dead, gilded silver by the icy touch of aether.
I could not fathom what madness; what catastrophic error of judgement had caused the captain to take us within reach of the Hades Web. The nebula was notorious for randomly spawning tentacles of aether, but easily avoided. For all the life left in me, I could not grasp how we had come to sail such dangerous air.
The ship rocked, Miss Carrington’s song faltered. ‘They come again in the morning, the morning, the morning, the…’
‘Captain didn’t see the Hades,’ Mac whispered in my ear. ‘That damn fool Anders changed the charts.’ I turned, expecting to see the Chief slouched against the bulkhead, sucking on his empty pipe. To my dismay, I discovered that I was alone.
I fumbled with the volume control on my earphones, desperate to find Mac amongst the scattered frequencies. It was a fool hope. After several long minutes, sense prevailed and I stopped hunting for the Chief’s voice. I had seen the strands of aether pour through the hull— and Mac’s suit hanging in the locker room. He was gone, they might all be gone for all I knew. It seemed that only Helen remained, a constant, trembling voice drifting through the snow of dead channels. I convinced myself that the voice I’d heard was nothing more than the ghostly remnant of an old recording; a scrap that had been trapped in the ship’s sound pipes and triggered to play by disaster. I did not think overmuch about the technicalities. Death was real as was the destruction wrought by the Hades Web. If I was to survive I must put my faith in reason and logic, not ghosts.
As though I had tempted Fate by eschewing belief in the supernatural, the tone of the engines suddenly changed, and the ship banked sharply. Rigid bodies rolled awkwardly across the deck, I was thrown against the bulkhead as we began to put on speed. Logic be damned I thought, and entreated Saint Dulce, the patron saint of hull monkeys, to save my sinner’s soul.
Thus protected by my patron and fuelled by anger and a desire not to die, I resolved to make for the bridge and take to task whoever was at the helm. Before setting out, I took the precaution of equipping myself with one of the tools of my trade which were stored in the nearby lockers.
The rivet gun was cumbersome, nevertheless, I felt safer with it, than without it. I tapped the gauge on the aether pump. The needle flickered before ticking across the dial to ‘full’. I hefted the gun, and loaded a cartridge of copper rivets into the breach before proceeding towards the bridge. For the first time in my career, the vast, loneliness of space weighed heavily upon me. My only companion was Helen who sang with unwavering sweetness, oblivious to the tragedy which had engulfed us. Her song offered the coldest of comfort but it was better than listening to my thoughts, the shallowness of my breath, or the erratic rhythm of my heart.
‘As the day is dawning, they come again in the morning…’
With agonizing slowness, I inched my way along the corpse strewn passageways, forced to duck beneath loose swinging gantries and dodge sparks from flickering lights, all the while watching the gauge on my air tanks tick inexorably from pink to red. Time was my enemy, but I remained determined to pass by my comrades with respect and a careful step; even so, I could hardly bring myself to look down, save when necessary to find my footing, but even though I did not look at aether scorched bodies of my shipmates, I could feel them. As I made my way to the bridge I brushed against their hands, felt the gritty roll of hair beneath my boot, and the leaden certainty of death in their frozen limbs. More than once I wanted to cry out, but I held my tongue, kept my sorrow in check, and pressed on.
After taking too long winding my way through the guts of the ship, I discovered that the most direct route to the bridge was blocked with debris. It might have been possible for me to squeeze between the jagged shards of deck plates, so long as the ship held to a steady course. If however, Persephone bucked or rolled, I risked tearing my suit or air tubes, assuring my death.
I fought the rising tide of panic growing within me as I wrestled with the dilemma and tried to focus on reaching the bridge. I traced the map of the ship’s layout in my mind and decided that the next best route was though the Officers’ Mess which was situated on the deck directly below the bridge. While I plotted my course, the gauge on my oxygen tanks began to blink a dull red, warning me of that which I already knew.
If a fair wind did not blow soon and turn the course of my fate, I would be faced with a most unenviable task; that of choosing between dying of suffocation, or taking off my helmet and letting the aether have me. I thrust the thought aside, lest acceptance of it paralyze me with melancholia.
With the help of a crowbar, I persuaded the wheel lock to turn. Before opening the door, I tied my life line to the handrail in the passage. Terror and necessity had bestowed upon me a calm clarity, a state of grace. I was not, as yet, the master of my fate— that lay in the hands of whichever fool was at the helm, but I was the captain of my soul, which, given the circumstances, was all a body could hope for.
On any other day, I would have felt a thrill of excitement entering the Officer’s Mess. I would have gazed out of the massive view ports which ballooned either side of Persephone’s ironclad prow and marvelled at the view, but not today.
‘Anders said he wanted to shave a blade of aeth fer hisself.’ McAllister whispered in my earphones. ‘Nay, said I, going close to the Hades is too much fer this old girl to handle. You can’t spear an octopus wi’a toothpick, I told him, but then he said he’d share.’ The Chief paused. I thought I could hear him breathing through the crackle of the wires but, the illusion —for that was surely what it must have been— pit my eyes and ears against each other, for what I saw belied that which I could hear.
‘I sold my soul fer the ghost of a promise, Rating, Cho. Sold us all…’ Mac’s voice, replete with misery and regret echoed in my ‘phones.
‘This cannot be,’ I said to no one living, but it was either that or scream. There before me, suspended like a spider in the centre of a web, woven from his own flesh, was Chief McAllister.
Whoever had done this had positioned Mac facing the window. He was hanging six feet off the ground, suspended by taut skeins of his partially flayed skin. Glistening lengths of flesh were tethered to roof beams, and nailed to the floor so that the whole bloody mess, spanned the room. I wanted to vomit only slightly less than I wanted to breathe the lethal air, and so swallowed the acid bile that had risen in my gorge.
‘I’m forever blowing bubbles, pretty bubbles in the air…’
The ship heeled over hard. Bodies tumbled across the deck and shattered against the bulkhead. I
stumbled, but managed to plant my weighted boots against one of the tables which were all bolted down. The sight before me now took second place in the list of terrors I had compiled as I realised we were turning toward the writhing knot of aether.
Driven by urgency borne of terror, I forced my way through the blood-slicked strands of Mac’s hide. I was determined not to look back, but like Edith, who did not heed the warning of angels, I did not heed the wisdom of my fear blighted mind.
I turned, and saw his face. The skin had been peeled from the meat and drawn back like the petals of a monstrous flower. His lidless eyes stared at the blindly at the Hades.
‘I can’t stand this.’ I said.
‘But you cannae look away, can you?’ Mac whispered.
‘They fly so high, nearly reach the sky...’
I dragged my gaze away from Mac’s ruined face. Tendrils of aether whipped from the Web and lashed Persephone, lighting up the bridge. The engines staggered. Startled, I squeezed the trigger of the riveter. Mac’s carcass danced as the threads of his flesh were severed by the trace of shining rivets. Earth below me, and hell to port, I lurched up the ladder to the bridge and prayed to Saint Dulce that I would not die, trapped in this madness.
The head of the ladder was bathed in flickering light that fluttered through the broken wings of a fan that was hanging from a gantry. I clutched the rivet gun to my chest and ducked beneath the fan. Squinting I entered the bridge and saw what had befallen the officers of the watch.
So acute was my horror that I forgot to breathe. My goggles fogged. Shaking, I gulped a mouthful of air and tightened my grip on the riveter. As far as I could see, all but one of the officers had been shot. Captain Herse had two bullet holes in her back. She was on her knees, slumped against the wheel with her arms draped across the spindles as though she was embracing a dear companion. Standing beside the captain with his back to me, was First Lieutenant Anders. He was wearing his white dress uniform. his hands were clasped casually behind his back, and he was carrying a Webley service revolver.
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