The Shadow Fabric

by Mark Cassell

I could smell a mustiness, the heavy presence of the Fabric. Darkness squeezed, tighter.

  That’s all there was. Darkness.

  CHAPTER 44

  The Shadow Fabric arched over us, and in a vortex of black waves, it shot away and slammed into the House. Brick and glass exploded. In an instant, the voices snapped off.

  I gasped and Isidore relaxed in my arms.

  The Fabric tore through the wrecked masonry.

  Inside the roiling mass of shadow, half submerged as if trapped in tar, were the bodies of necromeleons and stitchers. The rush of darkness was like a tsunami, tearing down all it struck, dragging more bodies en route. Drowning its victims—although these were already dead. Unlike the natural course of such a destructive wave, governed by momentum and gravity, this torrent of charged evil had a life of its own. Even slices of turf and trees were pulled into the Fabric.

  The majority of people had ceased stitching, now drained of their energies, and clouds of newly stitched shadows floated to join the darkness which continued to creep in on them. More stitchers collapsed. Few remained alive. All were shrouded in shadow, yet only Isidore and I were left alone as though the Fabric, and the recently stitched patches, had spared us.

  “What…” Isidore’s eyes were wide. We still clung to one another.

  I shook my head. I knew what she was asking. “No idea.”

  “Why aren’t we dead?” She gently moved away from me.

  “No idea.” It weakened me each time that pathetic answer rolled from my tongue. Still, it was the truth.

  No longer were there any traces of Witchblade fire around us, the Fabric having extinguished every last protective streamer.

  The Fabric’s slithering tail vanished beneath the foundations. Crumbled masonry and wooden splinters buckled in a tangle of cables and plumbing, followed by a belch of dust.

  I pressed the lighter and the can of polish into Isidore’s hands. Without a word, I left her and ran towards the Witchblade.

  Victor was now on his back. Goodwin leaned over him and pointed a finger. Behind them the last of the musician stitchers fell, a dark wisp of newly stitched Fabric floated away. It seeped into Goodwin’s shoulders. His image rippled as darkness squirmed beneath his false flesh.

  I ran, and it was difficult to ignore the crack of bones beneath my boots as I sprinted as best I could over the bodies. At first, I tried to leap over them, but it was impossible. Dust puffed around me, and on several occasions my feet tangled with clothes and almost pulled me down. With this and my screaming knee, I waited for the moment I would drop amongst the dead and be consumed by shadows.

  I reached the spot where I believed the athame to be. My head moved from side to side. Somewhere here, somewhere…somewhere.

  The ground still rumbled as the Shadow Fabric displaced the earth. On the perimeter of the gardens, great oaks and silver birches groaned and crashed in bursts of leaves, branches, and splintered trunks. Dirt and paving slabs spat out as if the ground coughed.

  As I rummaged between the bodies my stomach churned; my gloves had whitened, covered in the dust of the dead.

  Somewhere… somewhere here…

  On my hands and knees, a glance at the stage showed me that Goodwin no longer resembled the man I’d known; even though I knew it to be the Entity, I couldn’t help seeing it as him. Dark patches covered his face, bubbling beneath the flesh. The Entity was contained, still restricted to the form of man, yet its power was swiftly escalating. Victor sat up. The mass of deformed flesh towered over him.

  Slapping aside fragile bones, my hands fumbled watches, wallets and rings, bracelets, earrings and necklaces. I gritted my teeth as my stomach somersaulted. Somewhere here…

  Again, I glanced up, this time to Isidore. Short bursts of flame from the can she held forced back the darkness. Her mouth was small, eyes in a squint, a stance to be reckoned with. Then to Victor, and I saw the Entity pressing him to the stage. Shadows flitted around them.

  Somewhere…

  And then I found it. The Witchblade was warm to the touch and perfectly snug in my grip. I sprung to my feet as a crowd of voices filled my head. Each one an echo of affirmation, confirmation—the blade was mine, all mine. Holding the Witchblade was like brandishing a sword. Undeniably powerful. Such was the power in my hand, I was energised. No longer did I hurt anywhere. I felt taller, incredibly giant-like. No, not a giant. I was like a god.

  Inhaling the ozone, I ran to the stage with my arm outstretched, led by the sparking Witchblade. No longer was the agony tearing at my knee—it was as though the Witchblade acted as a kind of anaesthesia, its voices soothing me all the while.

  The Entity—now looking less like Goodwin—leaned over Victor. Tentacles emerged from Goodwin’s stomach and wrapped around Victor’s exposed ankle.

  “Victor!” My voice wasn’t as loud as his agony.

  Cool fire circled the Witchblade. There wasn’t any warmth, yet at the same time there was a tingle. And those voices, reassuring me. I reached the stage and the flames whipped around my arm. Near my feet, the clothes of fallen stitchers caught fire.

  From inside the bulbous body of what was once Goodwin, the Entity pushed outwards. It was like seeing two images, overlapping one another; reality being challenged as an echo of absolute malediction thrashed against the shell of that cruel impersonation.

  I was witnessing the completion of its haunt.

  With renewed energy, I bounded onto the wooden platform and rushed to Victor’s side. Where the shadows looped around his exposed ankles, his flesh blistered. It smouldered. His sweaty face told me the rest.

  The stink of burnt skin made me gag.

  I lunged and rammed the Witchblade into the tentacles that held him. Fire exploded along the lengths of darkness, and they drew back into Goodwin’s stomach. The jacket neatly linked together as though nothing had protruded from it. The image of Goodwin, however, greyed swiftly. Failing perhaps. It darkened in places and became less vivid. No longer was it glaringly false, yet the Entity’s true form was still evident. Haunting.

  Darkness rippled behind Goodwin’s face, and the impassive expression shifted as the Entity altered that mask to an arrogant smirk. All I wanted was to be rid of it, to smash my fist—my blade—into the face which didn’t belong there.

  From Goodwin’s eye sockets, streams of darkness shot towards me. The two jets became one. I braced myself and held the athame high as fire rushed outwards, then I twisted sideways.

  The shadows smashed against my fiery shield.

  Victor’s legs were a bloody mess of torn trousers and flesh. His lips moved.

  Under the strain of holding back the shadows, my back and shoulders ached. They burned. My legs buckled. Sweat prickled my forehead and my arms screamed.

  My leg slipped.

  I dropped onto my side. With my knee exploding in agony, I cried out. The flaming shield thinned, sputtered, and crackled. It was losing intensity. I still gripped the Witchblade in both hands, but the moment of disorientation had broken my mental link with it. Just the tiniest of moments was all it took, and the flames failed to protect me. Failed me and Victor…

  As fleeting as the moment was, that was all the Entity needed.

  A relentless energy surged behind Goodwin’s form. It fuelled the pummelling shadows and they broke through. They rushed past me and speared Victor’s body. His stomach burst open, the shadows thrusting into him. Blood sprayed and offal erupted.

  “Victor!” I ignored my protesting knee and spun the Witchblade around. It sliced into the serpentine shadow that coiled into his body. Too late. His body jerked as the Entity roared and retracted the shadows. They whipped away, avoiding the protective fire now spreading around Victor’s body.

  So much blood. So much mess.

  Victor’s dead eyes stared at nothing.

  CHAPTER 45

  With Victor’s name on my lips, I sprang to my feet. The Witchblade’s cool fire encircled me. Looking nothing like Goodwin, the Entity’s
burning eyes pulsed.

  And it knew it couldn’t touch me.

  Although it still held the shape and size of Goodwin, there was no mistaking its mask. There was a subtle displacement as the Entity raged beneath the image of the man I once knew, the man I once trusted. The flesh bubbled and spat. No longer was it even bipedal, just a shifting mass of shadow. Not of this world. Its haunt so close to completion.

  I glanced at Victor’s lifeless body and my grip tightened on the Witchblade. I tore my eyes from the mess of my friend’s torso and advanced on the Entity. My jaw ached from my clenched teeth.

  In a deluge of stygian black, the Fabric absorbed most of the stage, the musical instruments, and the husks of stitchers. It spread and took out the remains of the marquee and part of the garden. It rushed down the gaping crevices of what was once the car park, and raged outwards into the woodlands. Roaring, circling us, the Fabric closed in on the Entity, and it puffed up like a cobra ready to strike.

  And it did.

  With a snap, it devoured the grey lump of the Entity. Together, the Entity and the Fabric churned in black folds. Shadows coiled and streamed, knotting in a frenzy.

  “Shit,” I said. My heartbeat crowded my head. I raised the Witchblade and sparks flew, tumbling over my gloved hand. The smell of ozone was rich in my nostrils. Straight-backed, legs wide, I glared at the Fabric as the Entity’s carmine eyes throbbed within.

  So, the Entity was out. Released. Its haunt complete, and existed in this world through the medium of the Shadow Fabric. Strong enough to be without the life force of the dead, able to move freely within the Fabric itself, free to exist within our universe.

  And like this to infinity…

  Staring out of the Fabric, the burning eyes intensified and expanded. They separated and became another pair, equally brilliant. The four eyes flared and grew and became eight eyes, and more popped open. Many, many eyes. From where they were, a stem of shadow protruded from the Fabric like a grotesque neck. It saw me through dozens of eyes that reached into my core. Each was an accusation, mocking me. It was like gazing into the night’s sky where the stars weren’t blue ice chips against a black backdrop, but burning yellows and oranges, like too many Jupiters. Or maybe Mars by the power of a thousand… Mars, God of War.

  Only this wasn’t war. This was pure evil. There I was, in a face-off with undiluted Evil. The bastard burrowed into my soul, tearing my thought processes down, stripping them into baser instincts where Man’s own darkness dwells. As the Entity connected with that primal nature which exists deep within us, I roared, spit flying. I stepped forward, without any idea what made me do it. Perhaps it was Modern Man conflicting against the Cave Man. And for all my arrogant stupidity to face down such an enemy as the Entity, the lumpy head with those burning eyes flinched, albeit slightly.

  The heat of the Witchblade—my Witchblade—intensified and fire erupted like a geyser. Above the House, above the trees.

  Tracers of flame curved outwards in every direction. Some crackled, some roared. Thousands of fireballs scattered across the Shadow Fabric, and beneath each impact, its surface bubbled, blistered, and hissed.

  Witchblade sparks showered my face, ozone pouring into my lungs. The power pumped my muscles with adrenaline. It was as though a god-like energy charged the fibres of my tiny mortal body.

  I slammed the blade into the Fabric, between its many eyes. Again and again. I hooked it around and pinned the cursed thing to the edge of the stage. The boards were blackened by small fires, and more leapt across the grass where the floor had come apart, scorching a wider expanse.

  The dark head writhed under my power. Its banshee wail stormed into my mind. Where the athame sunk into the Fabric, flames sputtered and the eyes blinked out, leaving only one pair in the dark void of its bulbous head.

  They were Goodwin’s.

  No, I told myself, they only look like Goodwin’s. They’re not actually his. A sickness washed over me as those eyes drew me in—focusing on an essence of life. And it spoke to me. Just me. No one else. It held promises. It told me I’d have her back, I could have Amy back.

  “Amy?” I whispered.

  Amy, it said, she can be yours again.

  I moaned, my lips numbing.

  Everything can be the same again, it told me. You must release the Witchblade. Discard the athame. Lose it. Bury it.

  Bury it? Amy was—is—buried! My head, my shoulders, my whole body constricted as though hundreds of kilos of earth pushed down on me. I choked on it, feeling it scatter down my throat. It stuffed my windpipe. Smothering me…

  Amy. I saw her. Could smell her. There she was, the image of the girl I once loved—still love! Her hair, her smile, and the way her cheeks bunched up when she laughed. Laughs… When she laughs…she can laugh again.

  And the Entity promised to bring her back.

  It wasn’t earth that clogged my throat, it was tears. The dampness cooled my cheeks. Soothing, like the Witchblade fire rushing along my arm as it held the Entity.

  Promises…

  Goodwin’s eyes held me. Trust me, they said. She can be in your arms again. Trust. Goodwin? I wanted to laugh, yet couldn’t.

  Yes.

  And the eyes became Amy’s. Sharp, piercing, a shade of green. There was love there. There always had been. Still was…

  Can be again.

  Amy’s face shimmered in the darkness.

  “Amy?” I said. “Amy!”

  Agony fired up my leg—from my knee—and I wrenched my gaze away. Not Amy’s eyes at all. Nor were they Goodwin’s.

  They belonged to the Entity.

  Filling my mind as the trance broke, the Entity’s shriek clawed through me. I shook my head as a wave of nausea threatened to drag me into my own darkness.

  The searing pain kept me lucid.

  A streamer of fire had hooked itself around my knee, one end still attached to the Witchblade. The stink of burning material and singed flesh crawled up my nostrils.

  “Bastard!” I twisted the Witchblade even further into the thrashing lump of the Fabric.

  Isidore was now closer to the stage. She shook a can of furniture polish and waved the Zippo before her. Her hair obscured her face and I could just make out her wide eyes.

  The shadows were closing in on her. Fast.

  And an explosion tore the sky.

  It was from the House, the restaurant now a rush of fire and masonry and shards of so much glass.

  CHAPTER 46

  The erupting walls of Periwick House lit up the evening as if the sun had returned. I staggered and my grip of the Witchblade slipped. The blade was still buried in the Entity’s head, and I fell back, landing on my arse. With rapid breaths, tears streaming down my face, I somehow kept hold.

  Rubble and patches of fire settled throughout the scorched gardens. Amidst the collapsed part of the building, the fireball had retreated and now remained a flicker of tree-high tongues. Fires had broken out everywhere, smoke adding to the hazy darkness. Amazingly, the spotlights still glowed like a pair of lighthouses in fog.

  With the Entity pinned by the blade, I tightened my grip with renewed resolve. My teeth ached and I grunted, pushing down against the thing. Still dizzy from the explosion, I searched for Isidore. There she was on the ground. For a moment my stomach lurched as I thought she’d been brought down by the shadows, but no, she was on her knees. She tore the cardboard box open and shouted obscenities. I guessed there were no more cans of polish left.

  The Shadow Fabric spread to such an expanse it was difficult to tell where it ended and the natural evening shadows began. The edge closest to Isidore was a rippling mass of tentacles, like some mythological leviathan of the deep, breaking the surface of a midnight ocean and flailing its limbs to bring down its quarry in a fatal embrace.

  Isidore’s eyes reflected fear and fire.

  The crash of trees in the distance snatched away the sound of roaring flames. Along the perimeter of the grounds, the Fabric wrenched them fro
m the earth and sucked them into its darkness. The sharp crack of breaking trunks echoed around us.

  I straightened. My head reeled and my ears rang. With the Witchblade deep in the lump of darkness, I yanked. In a crackle of orange sparks the blade split the head in two and the Entity’s scream tore through my mind.

  The head, now eyeless, slithered into the mass of Fabric as the flames broke away. Fire crawled along the edge and across its surface. A wall of flame shot into the sky and swept outwards over the Fabric. Blinding.

  I grinned and yelled, “Yes!” as the lake of darkness succumbed to the Witchblade’s fire. In seconds a dome of comforting flame encased the mass of the Fabric. Yet several patches still managed to defy the fire.

  The Entity’s shriek rattled in my head.

  The seething Fabric outside the flames stretched and clumped into tentacles. They thrashed as small fires ate into them. One lashed at Isidore.

  She stumbled.

  I shouted at her and squinted into the flames like I stared at the sun. Sweat and tears drenched my face. She fell into a crouch and brought up her can. The snake of darkness went to strike her and a roar of fire whipped it away. It exploded. Small chunks of darkness smouldered and the sparks dwindled.

  I bounded over the stitchers’ bodies. This time not even attempting to avoid stomping on any. Witchblade fire sputtered around me. Several fireballs shot at the remaining limbs of shadow.

  Reaching Isidore as she straightened, I eyed the remnants of shadows. The fire consumed them. My head hammered and I heard the Entity raging from inside the Fabric, imprisoned within that fiery dome.

  “What else can we do?” Isidore’s eyes were wide.

  “Don’t know.” The Witchblade crackled in my hand. “Victor’s gone. Goodwin’s gone. This is so messed up.”

  She shook her head and screwed her eyes tight. “It’s horrible.”

  “You can hear it, too?”

  She nodded and opened her eyes.

  Inside our heads the Entity continued to scream.