Death's Dominion

by Simon Clark

  For a moment the group watched Dominion plough downhill through the vegetation as if an elemental force drove him.

  GO DOWN TO THE TOWN. TAKE WHAT YOU NEED. His words reverberated inside her. Go down to the town? Insanity. They’d be slain the moment they entered the place. It would be suicide. You might as well throw yourself off the cliff top into the ocean. And yet she realized she was already following him. GO DOWN TO THE TOWN. TAKE WHAT YOU NEED.

  Saiban called out, ‘Elsa, don’t go with him. You don’t know what he’s going to do down there.’

  Already Saiban’s was a lone voice. One by one the rest of the group followed. They moved as if they’d been mesmerized. It was an act of insanity … but what else could they do? Where else would they go? Up here in the hills was a slow death. Down there would be different. But whether it was a fast demise … or something else she didn’t know. Elsa’s heart hammered furiously. Fear, or excitement? Again, she couldn’t tell. As she forged her way through stinging nettles she passed a board fixed to a post. The years had taken their toll. It was submerged by plant growth. The flat panel had cracked. Moss had formed a green rash across it. But she recognized it as an information board provided for tourists when they still visited the area. Although faded by years of ferocious weather she made out a map. It showed the town on the coast where they were now headed. Scaur Ness. On the cliff top, a dark oblong labelled the Pharos. That must be the castle. They now followed a long obliterated path toward it. On the way they’d pass features with strange names that assumed a forbidding aspect to Elsa. Mulgrave Moor, Stanghow Crag, Thorngrove Wyke, Throstle Nest, Haggaback House, Stony Marl, Dalby Head, Warsman Snout. The dark rhythm of the place names shared a symmetry with that pulse of dread she felt in her heart. The names possessed all the resonance of a primeval rite.

  Elsa knew this was it. She’d passed the point of no return. She’d resolved to follow Dominion into town. Whatever happened then was in the lap of the gods.

  11

  The Town of Sleep

  Forget stealth. Subtlety? Out of the window. This was no creep into town as thieves to quietly pilfer what they needed. This is blitzkrieg. Dominion strode into the harbour town. He marched along the main street. His feet thudded on the pavement; the only sound in the sleeping community. Elsa and Paul did their best to keep up with Dominion’s relentless march. They were perhaps fifty paces behind him. The rest of the group followed in a straggling line. They were in a daze. No one expected Dominion to arrive like he owned the place. To Elsa’s relief there was no one about. The townspeople all seemed to be in bed even though the church clock had still to sound the midnight hour. To her right lay the glistening pool of the harbour, where a motley array of fishing boats dipped on the tide. Further to her right the cliff that dominated the town soared 200 feet into the air. On top of that loomed the formidable mass of the castle, or the Pharos as it was known. Even though it was night she could make out its powerful towers that thrust upward like muscular limbs.

  From a distance Scaur Ness appeared picturesque. Close up, she saw that economic ruin had left the town a desolate place. Trash littered the street; in the alleyways that led into the back lanes rats gnawed on bread crusts that spilled from entire mounds of household refuse that hadn’t been collected in weeks. Half the streetlights didn’t work. What were once quaint cottages with red-tiled roofs were dilapidated – an oddly pathetic sight that tugged at her heart. Many of the stores were boarded up. A bankrupt petrol station could only boast a tangle of weeds growing on its forecourt. More rats squeaked amongst the filth. Now they were in the midst of the populated district Elsa couldn’t avoid the stink of the drains that were pungently in need of maintenance.

  Ahead of her Dominion bore down on the town’s center. ‘WAKE UP!’ His voice was thunder, while echoes duplicated the command, Wake up … wake up … wake up …

  Behind her, she heard intakes of breath as the rest of the group reacted to Dominion’s roar.

  ‘WAKE UP!’

  ‘My God,’ Beech hissed. ‘What’s he doing?’

  West’s voice was grim. ‘If he wants all the saps to know we’re here he’s doing a grand job.’

  Saiban hung back. ‘He’s insane. We should never have come here. We could have negotiated a surrender. We could have turned ourselves in and—’

  ‘WAKE UP! WAKE UP! WAKE UP!’ Dominion’s voice battered the town.

  Saiban clamped his mouth shut. His frightened eyes roved the dense pack of houses as lights flared in bedroom windows.

  ‘WAKE UP!’

  Elsa glanced at Paul. His eyes were wide with shock.

  ‘Why did we follow him?’ she asked. ‘We’re as crazy as he is.’

  ‘Watch him. Dominion knows what he’s doing.’

  Beech joined them. ‘He’s waking the whole place that’s what he’s doing.’

  West moved back against a wall. ‘He’s off his skull. Keep back, they’ll start shooting at us.’

  ‘Just wait.’ Paul’s voice was fierce. ‘Dominion’s onto something. This has a purpose.’

  ‘God help us if you’re wrong.’

  Dominion stopped before the old houses that ascended row after row up the hillside. They formed his own personal audience of bricks and timber.

  ‘WAKE UP! WAKE UP!’

  By now faces could be glimpsed behind window panes as people peered out to see this man-shaped typhoon that had roared into town.

  ‘WAKE UP!’ The bellow reverberated through the alleyways. Dogs started barking. ‘WAKE UP!’ As the echo of his wake-up call faded he strode toward a car, reached down with his massive hands, grasped its bodywork beneath the doors, then lifted. With a strangely bovine groan the vehicle rolled onto its side.

  ‘Maybe we should leave Dominion to it?’ West suggested. ‘We don’t want to spoil his fun.’ He wiped a fear sweat from his brow. ‘What do you say to making a run for it before the townsfolk start taking potshots?’

  ‘Wait,’ Paul hissed back. ‘See what happens next.’

  ‘You’re as crazy as he is.’ West backed off to where the rest of the God Scarers hid in the shadows.

  In a break between the houses a cemetery ran uphill to a church built of gloomy stone. Dominion walked with all the dread purpose of Satan himself sweeping into his private realm. He smashed open the iron gates. After that he surged through the graveyard. His massive arms swung out punching the heads off statues that adorned the tombs. He bellowed, ‘WAKE UP! WAKE UP!’ as he toppled monuments to the dead who lay rotting in the ground beneath his pounding feet. Whether he called to the cadavers lying in their coffins or to the citizens of Scaur Ness Elsa could not say. Nevertheless, she glanced across at the houses. More lights came on in bedrooms. A yellow radiance fell on the harbour waters to illuminate the rotting hulks of ships. In the windows she saw silhouettes of heads as a startled populace tried to figure out who this man was with a voice of thunder. She saw Dominion seize an angel in white stone that must have weighed 300 pounds. He hoisted it above his head, then he hurled it into a storefront. It crashed through the shutters in an explosion of shattered glass.

  ‘He’s not done yet,’ Paul murmured. ‘Keep watching.’

  Dominion then attacked a pyramid-shaped tomb. He wrestled with an object before wrenching it away from its brackets. Elsa saw he’d torn a cross from the stonework. The thing was almost as tall as he was. And when he hoisted it onto his shoulder to carry it back through the cemetery the ringing clang the shaft made when it struck against tombstones told her the massive cross had been wrought from iron.

  Elsa shook her head. ‘A great time to find religion …’ Her stab at black humour was intended to ease her growing sense of alarm. It didn’t work. She felt sick with fear. Why had she followed Dominion? She must have been infected by his madness; it was the only answer. Now Dr Paul Marais, standing there in his green surgical scrubs, watched with such an expression of awe shining on his face he could have been witnessing the Second Coming in all its shining
majesty with a choir of angels to hallelujah the appearance of the Godhead.

  But no … we are a bunch of scared monsters – Frankenstein’s bastard progeny – cowering in a filthy, run-down, bankruptcy-ravaged town at the edge of the sea. And any second now its inhabitants are going to realize what we are. Then they’ll start killing.

  In the meantime, Dominion obeyed some dark, indomitable instinct. He crossed the road from the cemetery with the cross on his shoulder. So old, even the ironwork had become gnarled like the limbs of ancient tree, the cross sparked on the blacktop each time it clipped it. Still, nobody from the town challenged Dominion. It seemed as if everyone knew he would do something. They were held in a spell of anticipation.

  Dear God, just what would that instinct drive him to do next? Elsa found herself holding her breath. By this time, Dominion had reached the car. He swung the cross from his shoulder, then as if he wielded a spear he drove it into the car’s fuel tank. Petrol haemorrhaged from the gash in the tank. It spilled onto the road to flow along the gutter. The next moment he used the cross as a club. He swung it against the torn fuel tank. A thunderous clang reverberated through the canyons of trash-filled streets. The second time he struck the car so hard it shuddered like a wounded beast. Sparks jetted from where metal struck metal. The third time Dominion smote the car as it lay there the sparks ignited the petrol. Instantly a ball of fire rose into the night sky. It illuminated the houses in a sickly yellow light. A second later the burning fuel in the gutter sent a line of fire running along the road.

  Dominion threw the cross into the blazing car. The force of the impact pierced the bodywork. The cross jutted out of the vehicle at right angles, a cruciform shape bathed in the incandescent light.

  As the God Scarers followed Dominion, they clearly wished they were anywhere but here. Next stop for the giant figure was a grocery shop. He shouldered open the locked door. Once in the store he ripped a curtain from a window then threw canned food into it. Elsa and Paul arrived to find the store’s owner race in his pyjamas from an inner doorway.

  ‘Stop that … get out of my store. Do you hear?’ The white-haired man flung himself on Dominion.

  Dominion flicked him away as if hardly noticing him. Winded by the blow, the man leaned back against magazine racks that held just a handful of dusty journals. Before he could recover, another figure darted from the same inner doorway that the man had used. It was a woman in her twenties. She wore a white cotton nightdress. Her black hair tumbled down to her waist in wild curls. In the gloom her eyes flashed as bright as splinters of glass. Elsa recalled Dominion’s handiwork in the form of the soldier’s crushed skull. She pictured Dominion sweeping the woman’s beautiful head from her shoulders with one powerful swipe of his arm.

  ‘Stop!’ The woman grabbed hold of Dominion’s upper arm.

  His gaze swept down to meet her eyes. Elsa anticipated the woman to fall back before such a glare as that but the woman stood her ground. Instead, she put her open palm on Dominion’s hand.

  ‘You must let me help.’ She picked up a case of cans and tipped them into the curtain that Dominion had spread out across the counter.

  When she stood back he gathered the corners of the fabric to create a massive pouch for the food. After picking it up he walked past the dazed shopkeeper and back out into the street where he thrust the makeshift bag into Paul’s hands. That done, he walked in that purposeful way along the road that separated the harbour from the tiers of houses.

  Elsa and the rest followed him. What could they do? They couldn’t flee so easily now the townspeople had started to emerge from their homes. Behind them, the shopkeeper stumbled through the wrecked doorway of his shop.

  He cried out, ‘They’ve taken my daughter … Do you see! They’ve got Caitlin. For God’s sake help her!’

  Caitlin didn’t need God’s help. She didn’t need anyone’s help. Because Caitlin walked behind Dominion of her own choosing. She was a wiry, determined-looking woman with black hair that swished down her back. Her slim legs emerged from the bottom of the cotton nightdress to gleam nakedly in the meagre lights of the town. When her father called she didn’t look back. Elsa saw that no matter how much the rough road hurt Caitlin’s bare feet she wasn’t going to slow down. Not for one bloody minute.

  12

  The Pharos

  The town had woken. Everywhere, houses had lights shining from windows. Men and women were spilled out into the street. His legs carried him forward. He hadn’t planned this. He operated on pure instinct.

  To his right the cliff face soared high over the town. On top of it stood the castle. An enormous structure of stone blocks. Its impassive face had brooded over the town for centuries. That was his destination. For all the world it could have been whispering his name … Dominion.

  Ahead of him the road split into two. The left fork carried on by the harbour. The right fork arched over the water to be carried aloft by an iron bridge to the other side. Behind him were his own kind. They were exhausted and they were frightened. With them was the woman in the white nightdress – a human. In front of him a group of men had formed a line across the road. They’d hastily dragged on jeans, T-shirts, sweaters. The laces of the boots were untied. In the gloom he saw that they’d armed themselves with what they could. Some had shotguns. The rest carried axes, hammers, iron spikes. Dominion’s sharp senses were alert to every sound, odour and movement. The car he’d set alight still burned with a snapping sound as windows shattered; the tyres bursting with the heat sounded like rifle shots. In this mix of sounds he heard the claws of the rats as they scuttled through the drains beneath his feet. Gulls shuffled restlessly in their nests amongst the chimneys. The unusual noises had unsettled them. He also heard the murmur of the men forty paces in front of him.

  ‘You know what they are, don’t you?’ one grunted to another.

  ‘They’ll have got away from the transit station. Some of them are wearing hospital fatigues.’

  Dominion didn’t flinch. He walked straight at them.

  One bearded man held up his hand. ‘That’s as far as you go.’

  Dominion kept walking.

  A thickset man in an unbuttoned shirt gestured with his shotgun. ‘You’ve got to do what we say. You stop where you are. Do you hear?’

  A boy called from a doorway, ‘Who are they, Dad?’

  ‘A bunch of God Scarers.’

  A woman called from the house. ‘George? What are you going to do to them?’

  ‘What do you think? Get the boy inside.’

  From the direction of the house came the sound of the boy protesting. ‘No … I wanna watch!’

  Another man shouted from the line, ‘You lot … hey, you fucking monsters. I’m talking to you. Go stand by that railing.’

  The God Scarers stopped dead.

  Dominion didn’t pause. If anything he moved faster. A number of the men in front of him appeared uneasy at the sight of this colossus bearing down on them out of the night.

  The man in the open shirt called out to steady their nerves. ‘Don’t back away. They’re God Scarers. They can’t hurt us. It’s impossible for them to harm a human being.’

  Fifteen paces away.

  ‘Shit.’ One of the men fumbled with a rifle.

  ‘I’ll drop the big one.’ The man called George raised his shotgun. The weapon discharged with a dull thump. Buckshot stung Dominion’s chest. Behind him, the human girl shouted. When he glanced back he saw a red stain appear on her arm.

  Dominion lunged forward.

  ‘Oh, Jesus Christ,’ was all the man managed to say before Dominion knocked him to the ground. The other man with the gun quit struggling with the faulty firing mechanism. He flung it aside and ran. Those that stayed found themselves tossed aside as if they were nothing more substantial than dolls. One brawny man struck Dominion on the shoulder with an iron bar. As he raised the club for strike number two Dominion gripped the man’s fist that held the bar and squeezed. He heard the bones in h
is attacker’s hand break. When the man screamed in pain he let go. The man stumbled away into the night clutching his injured hand to his belly.

  With the exception of the men lying semi-conscious on the pavement the way was clear.

  ‘I told you to bring the food.’ Dominion glared at Paul.

  Paul nodded and picked up the makeshift bag made from the curtain. Cans clunked together. The group, however, still didn’t move. All, that is, except the human girl. She followed him despite blood pumping from the wound in her arm where the ricochet had caught her.

  Dominion turned to Paul again. ‘You are a doctor?’

  ‘What of it?’

  ‘Then you can take care of her when we get there.’

  ‘But she’s—’

  ‘Start walking,’ Dominion told them. ‘We’re nearly there.’

  With that he crossed the bridge. Ahead of them a flight of steps that had been cut into the cliff face ascended to the castle. Dominion began to climb.

  No one challenged them; no one got in their way. Back in the streets the people tended to their wounded neighbours while others gathered in groups to talk, no doubt asking one another what they should do next about this midnight invasion of monsters into their town.

  13

  Trespass

  Dominion might have exerted an irresistible pull for all they could do to resist. He climbed the 400 or so steps to the castle. It loomed above them into the night sky. A dark monument to oppression against a darker firmament.

  Behind him climbed the girl in the nightdress. Even though she’d been wounded by the buckshot, with blood forming a sleeve of glistening red on her left hand, she refused to pause. Sheer willpower drove her on. Then came Elsa, Paul at her side. The rest of the God Scarers followed in a bunch behind them. Any time now Elsa expected a hail of gunfire directed at them from the town below. It fell eerily silent, however. Either stunned into inactivity by Dominion’s audacious invasion of their sleepy backwater, or they reasoned that to fire on the monsters might result in the death of one of their own. Caitlin appeared to be wayward, probably the local wild child, but nobody back there wanted her dead.