by Stephen Laws
“Yes, I know,” replied Barbara as she finished binding Cardiff‘s hands. “But there’s still more to it than that. The Darkfall has something to do with us . . . with people. What they are, and what they do. The worse they are, the more cruel they are, the more hateful they are . . . makes the perfect conditions for Darkfall to happen. Oh, I don’t know. My head hurts and . . .”
“Listen!” hissed Jimmy.
Silence. just the dribbling of water somewhere.
“I can’t hear anything,” said Cardiff.
“No, listen. I can hear . . .”
And now they could all hear it. A movement in the rubble somewhere above; a scraping on the metal wall of the elevator; a shifting now of the rubble where it had ruptured the elevator wall.
“They’ve found us,” said Cardiff in a quiet and weary voice. “Thank God. They’ve found us.”
“In here!” shouted Jimmy, crawling towards the source of the noise. “We’re in here!”
The shifting and scuffling of rubble was louder now, more energetic, as their rescuers drew near. Jimmy laughed out loud when he heard the sounds of exerted breathing from somewhere behind the rubble. He began to tear at the concrete and the plaster himself.
“Barbara?” he called in joy over his shoulder as he worked.
“Yes?”
“Seems like I’m going to have to get a full-time, respectable job if I’m going to be able to afford all those records you want.”
Barbara laughed. To Jimmy, it was one of the most beautiful sounds he had ever heard. He pulled away another chunk of rubble.
And Rohmer’s monstrous, shrieking face burst through the gap, jaws champing.
“Oh my GOD!” Jimmy hurled himself backwards away from the Horror, scrabbling back to the others as the Rohmer-thing thrashed and scrabbled in the rubble to get at them. Its head was surrounded by the same hideous red aura that they had seen on the roof. Blood-soaked and horribly crushed, the thing was in a frenzy of hate and lust as it screeched and roared at them. The cab was lit vividly red by the hideous aura emanating from it. The same collapsing concrete which had driven them underground had also smashed Rohmer underground with them.
“When will it end?” screamed Barbara. “When will it END?!”
Rohmer’s hideous eyes fixed on Cardiff as its claws lashed at the rubble and it slid further into the cab.
“ISSSSSS ITTTTTT YOUUUUUU?” hissed Rohmer, and Cardiff knew that, finally, it was the time for answers.
Ignoring the savagery of the pain in his hands, Cardiff scrabbled to legs that threatened to collapse under him, and grabbed a chunk of concrete from nearby. He lunged forward past Barbara and Jimmy as Rohmer groped inwards with his steel-claw hands.
Cardiff slammed the concrete chunk directly into Rohmer’s face, and was instantly splattered with a nauseous ichor. Rohmer thrashed, screeching, and Cardiff felt a claw slice into his leg as he raised the concrete and struck again, this time with hate and sudden realisation.
Is it you?
He had been looking for Death. And he had instinctively perceived Rohmer to be the agent of his demise. Rohmer . . . his executioner.
Cardiff slammed the concrete down hard again.
Is it you?
And Rohmer had been looking for that Answer, too. Looking for a transcendence from the self-disgust he had felt, looking for that same Death . . . even though his madness had driven him to look for that Answer in the Absorption of Darkfall. Rohmer had also instinctively perceived that maybe Cardiff was His Own Executioner.
“Iss it you, Brottther . . . .?” hissed Rohmer.
Cardiff screamed in rage as he smashed the concrete down hard again. “I’m no kin of yours! I’m no Brother to You!”
Rohmer slumped to the floor of the cab, claws still thrashing, head hideously pulped and incapable of reforming.
“I’m going to live, Rohmer! I’m going to LIVE!” Cardiff slammed the concrete down hard on the Rohmer-thing’s head again, and tottered away from it, collapsing. “To live . . . to live . . .”
Barbara and Jimmy were dragging him away to the far corner of the cab as he looked back at Rohmer. His shattered body was spasming and twitching, the claws scraping feebly on the metal floor of the elevator.
“We were both mad,” said Cardiff weakly, but purged. “Looking down the barrel of some sort of bloody gun. But I’m not going to die, Rohmer. I’m not . . .”
The Rohmer-thing raised its shattered head, and looked directly at him with its one remaining, hideous eye.
“Itttt . . . wassss . . . yoouuuu . . .” hissed Rohmer.
Sibilant breath rattled from the Rohmer-thing. The red aura surrounding it faded. It spasmed once more.
And died.
They wept.
THIRTY FOUR
Darkness again.
And in the renewed, utter blackness of what they knew must now be their grave, the cold of winter had descended to find them. It crept through the rubble, ice-cold water trickling and pooling around where they lay. It soaked their clothes and numbed their flesh. The sound of that trickling water was preternaturally loud, like the dirge of water in forgotten caves.
They had huddled together in the darkness to share their warmth and at first they’d talked and shared as only those who’ve been through Hell can. And even when the cold and the exhaustion and the horror of their ordeal had taken away further words, no words were really necessary to vocalise their special Bond.
The bitter cold had also taken the pain away from Cardiff’s hands, and he was glad of that. But he knew that when the cold which enshrouded their bodies began to dissipate, and the false warm-glow began . . . then this was the onset of hypothermia. The lowering of their body temperatures would lead to a drowse, presaging a sleep which would lead to the sleep of death.
Was that the kind of death he had been destined for after all?
Death . . . it’s had so many chances. On the day when the faceless man took Lisa and Jamie away, but he didn’t take me. And the thing that had been Barbara’s brother. It had its chance to take me then. And Rohmer. But perhaps more importantly—the elevator shaft. I gave it the best chance of all, but it refused to take me up, just as it refused to take up its option on all the others.
Ice-cold water.
The frozen chill of Death on his face.
The feel of Barbara’s loving embrace.
Jimmy, at his side in the darkness, with one hand on his shoulder.
I’m to be denied the death I was looking for. A violent, bloody death where I could scream at the meaninglessness of it while I was going, just as I screamed my denial at Rohmer. I wanted to die because I‘d lost them both. And because I’d lost them, everybody else’s loss made it worse. But I don’t want to die now because being dead doesn’t help, doesn’t make sense of their being taken away. I can help others with their loss, try to even up the scores for them . . . because I’m good at what I do. Crazy . . . it’s taken this nightmare to show me . . . now . . . the death we’ll share . . . will just be a slow drowse . . . into the last sleep . . .
Somewhere in the darkness, something moved.
Cardiff felt Barbara’s body shudder in fright. She clung to him, shivering. He heard Jimmy seizing a piece of rock with numb fingers, felt him shifting to protect them both.
Rohmer?
No . . . he (or it) was dead. The sound was coming from the other side of the pulverised elevator . . . and now there was more movement. A sly shifting of rubble.
Cardiff pulled Barbara closer to him as Jimmy pushed himself towards the sound, trying to raise the rock.
Rescuers? Or another of Rohmer’s nightmare horde, trapped in the rubble and hunting for food?
The sly shifting became a frenzied and frantic scrabbling. Something was tearing at the pulverised metal of the elevator cab above their heads. The squealing sounds of tending, tearing metal filled the small space in which they were huddled. Light spilled into the grave. Rain began to fall on their bodies. From above, t
he sounds of tortured and desperate breathing. Jimmy collapsed over their legs exhausted, dropping the rock. Barbara sobbed, and stroked his head.
Cardiff held them both, staring defiantly up at the cab roof.
No tears, no prayers.
Rescue or Death.
Heaven, Hell or Darkfall.
At least we’re together.
And then a voice from somewhere above said: “Hey . . . there is someone alive down here.”
Snow began to drift down into their upturned faces, and Cardiff could feel Jimmy beginning to laugh.
“Know what day it is today, Cardiff?”
His laughter had a good, clean, beautifully honest sound.
Cardiff began to laugh too, feeling it rising and swelling inside him. Barbara was laughing with them both now as they looked up at the hole being torn in the elevator cab roof. That laughter was not far removed from tears, but reinforced that special Bond within. .
“Yes, Jimmy. And it’s a hell of a way to spend Christmas.”
“Thence we came forth to see the stars again.”
Dante
Epilogue
It began gradually, as it always did, bringing with it a myriad of symptoms to those living below. Headaches, nausea, neck pain, migraine, disorientation and a draining of energy. Parents became irritable, blaming Christmas and all its paraphernalia for their loss of temper with the kids, never dreaming that its onset always brought such symptoms, not realising that sixty per cent of the population suffer at least one or more of these symptoms as a prelude to a thunderstorm.
Dogs scratched at doors and were let outside to do their business, where they vomited—another symptom of an oncoming storm. Cats fussed, could not settle, and would not be stroked. Cattle that had not yet been led to shelter lay down and would not move until coaxed.
Between pylons, the overhead power cables carrying five hundred kilovolts reacted to its gathering. The electrical field around them began to swell, causing temporary power surges and blackouts throughout the region. Dozens of people living within close proximity to these pylons felt a prickling of anxiety, and discovered with only mild curiosity that the hairs on their arms were standing up, another not unusual phenomenon.
It gathered and moved over the city. Already, its thunderclouds were charged with electricity as it passed. When the insulating properties of the air broke down, the clouds would be discharged with a momentary electric current . . . and the first lightning flash would occur. The chances of a lightning strike on a house or person are four per cent of one in twenty-five.
But this storm was different.
The rain was harsher now and growing more intense by the minute. The Storm had ceased to move. It had found its nucleus, and would stay while it continued to build strength. The roiling clouds darkened from grey to black, and the first grumblings of thunder resounded within them.
It had begun again.
In Kiev, Sydney, Rome and San Francisco . . . a Storm was coming.
Stephen Laws is a full-time novelist, born in Newcastle upon Tyne. He lives and works in his birthplace.
THE SEBASTIAN BECKER NOVELS
STEPHEN GALLAGHER
Chancery lunatics were people of wealth or property whose fortunes were at risk from their madness. Those deemed unfit to manage their affairs had them taken over by lawyers of the Crown, known as the Masters of Lunacy. It was Sebastian’s employer, the Lord Chancellor’s Visitor, who would decide their fate. Though the office was intended to be a benevolent one, many saw him as an enemy to be outwitted or deceived, even to the extent of concealing criminal insanity.
It was for such cases that the Visitor had engaged Sebastian. His job was to seek out the cunning dissembler, the dangerous madman whose resources might otherwise make him untouchable. Rank and the social order gave such people protection. A former British police detective and one-time Pinkerton man, Sebastian had been engaged to work ‘off the books’ in exposing their misdeeds. His modest salary was paid out of the department’s budget. He remained a shadowy figure, an investigator with no public profile.
THE KINGDOM OF BONES
After prizefighter-turned-stage manager Tom Sayers is wrongly accused in the slayings of pauper children, he disappears into a twilight world of music halls and temporary boxing booths. While Sayers pursues the elusive actress Louise Porter, the tireless Detective Inspector Sebastian Becker pursues him. This brilliantly macabre mystery begins in the lively parks of Philadelphia in 1903, then winds its way from England’s provincial playhouses and London’s mighty Lyceum Theatre to the high society of a transforming American South—and the alleyways, back stages, and houses of ill repute in between.
“Vividly set in England and America during the booming industrial era of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, this stylish thriller conjures a perfect demon to symbolize the age and its appetites”
—New York Times
THE BEDLAM DETECTIVE
…finds Becker serving as Special Investigator to the Masters of Lunacy in the case of a man whose travellers’ tales of dinosaurs and monsters are matched by a series of slaughters on his private estate. An inventor and industrialist made rich by his weapons patents, Sir Owain Lancaster is haunted by the tragic outcome of an ill-judged Amazon expedition in which his entire party was killed. When local women are found slain on his land, he claims that the same dark Lost-World forces have followed him home.
“A rare literary masterpiece for the lovers of historical crime fiction.”
—MysteryTribune
THE AUTHENTIC WILLIAM JAMES
As the Special Investigator to the Lord Chancellor’s Visitor in Lunacy, Sebastian Becker delivers justice to those dangerous madmen whose fortunes might otherwise place them above the law. But in William James he faces a different challenge; to prove a man sane, so that he may hang. Did the reluctant showman really burn down a crowded pavilion with the audience inside? And if not, why is this British sideshow cowboy so determined to shoulder the blame?
“It's a blinding novel... the acerbic wit, the brilliant dialogue—the sheer spot-on elegance of the writing: the plot turns, the pin sharp beats. Always authoritative and convincing, never showy. Magnificently realized characters in a living breathing world . . . Absolutely stunning”
—Stephen Volk
(Ghostwatch, Gothic, Afterlife)
“Gallagher gives Sebastian Becker another puzzle worthy of his quirky sleuth’s acumen in this outstanding third pre-WW1 mystery”
—Publishers Weekly starred review
