The Shadow Fabric

by Mark Cassell

  More flames ate into the House and parts of the roof collapsed in great plumes of dust and smoke. Another rush of fire. So bright, we held our arms up, squinting, looking away.

  Something was happening to the perimeter of the fiery dome. It swelled—breathed almost—and then it shrank. In thickening clouds of darkness, the dome closed in on the bulk of Fabric leaving a ring of singed grass. Fractionally, second by second, it continued to shrink.

  I blinked at the smoke scratching my eyes and coughed as it stuffed itself down my throat.

  Isidore clutched the Zippo and brought it up to her face. “Like this back?”

  “Keep hold of it.” I coughed again.

  Before she replied, a dog barked from inside the ruined House.

  “Georgie!” Isidore grabbed my arm. “We have to get him.”

  I had no say in the matter, because she sprinted across the burning gardens. She dodged smouldering masonry and headed towards the entrance to the House.

  With a glance at the shrinking dome, I felt a strange sense of calm. I had defeated the Entity. Hadn’t I?

  Isidore had already covered a considerable distance and with the Entity’s voice still echoing in my head, I ran after her. The back end of the House was mostly in flaming ruins, while the majority of its frontage remained intact. As I rounded the corner, I almost slammed into Isidore. She stood looking across the immense burrows where the Fabric had churned up the ground. Her eyes darted around, searching every dark corner. We leapt over the heaps of earth and cracked paving, and jogged towards the entrance. My knee throbbed.

  The Entity’s voice had lessened, yet I sensed it reaching out, influencing something else: the shadows. Such was the Entity’s power, although the flaming dome continued to force the Fabric into a tighter bundle of darkness, it was still capable of manipulating the shadows around us. They merged into one—shadowplay in the making. It wouldn’t be the Shadow Fabric as such, but close enough to be lethal. I’d witnessed too many times the capability of ordinary shadows. Even as we approached the entrance, those shadows rippled with sentient menace directed en masse by the Entity.

  Georgie’s sharp barks suggested he saw us. We couldn’t see him.

  I followed Isidore over the threshold and into the foyer. My heart lurched. Beyond chasms of rubble and earth and flitting shadows, the crumbled staircase curled behind the remains of the reception area. Somewhere overhead and past the splintered balustrades was my room. This place, the only home I remembered, had been my sanctuary. Goodwin, for all his deceit, had welcomed me and given me somewhere I could call home. Had he really cured me?

  My home was now destroyed.

  From beneath the foyer, lumps of concrete had cleaved the marble floor and burst through at jagged angles. Given the Fabric’s burrowing, the devastation wasn’t a surprise.

  Through the smoke, I saw something: several buckled rods of metal pinching a mattress. Dark stains covered the material and a wheel pressed into its soft edge. The twisted bulk was a gurney from under the House where Goodwin’s experiments had taken place. Where he experimented on me. Even cured me? I could’ve died like most, or perhaps gone mad. Or worse, I could’ve been one of the reanimated dead.

  I remembered all the necromeleons down there and knew why the Shadow Fabric had burrowed into the ground, tearing up the foundations.

  It wanted to get to something—many things…

  As I followed Georgie’s barks and manoeuvred around gaping holes, the first of many dead hands clutched at the jagged edges. They clawed and reached out into the smoking air.

  CHAPTER 47

  Isidore screamed and leapt away as a metal box bounced between us in a flutter of shadowleaves. It skittered across the lobby floor and shot down a fissure. The Shadow Fabric’s earlier burrowing had a purpose when it heaved up the House foundations—to release the reanimated dead from their cells.

  It succeeded.

  Remaining where she crouched, Isidore slipped a full magazine into her gun. A moment later, her hand recoiled as the sharp crack of her weapon shocked my ringing ears. Her target’s head snapped back and darkness dribbled from the hole in its forehead. The necromeleon still clambered out of the ruined floor. Isidore targeted others and pulled off another three or four rounds. Still they came.

  It was time to see what else the Witchblade was capable of.

  Careful to step around the shadowleaves, I held up the Witchblade. It streamed fire in short bursts to protect us. Cool flames spread around my arm, my muscles tingling. The comforting smell of ozone teased my senses and displaced the thickening smoke.

  From all sides, as half a dozen necromeleons clambered into view, the shadows closed in. The condensed darkness further dimmed the light of the foyer. From a crevice near my feet, dead eyes stared at me, the face framed in unmistakeable red hair. With an outstretched arm, Katrina’s reanimated corpse grabbed my hand. I yanked myself away and left her with my glove. I swung the Witchblade around and down to drive it between her eyes. Fire blistered behind her face, and the black orbs of her eyes burst in a spray of pus and shadow. She fell back into the gloom, taking my glove with her.

  With only one glove, I didn’t have time to be concerned—I would have to be careful not to touch any shadowleaves should any come my way.

  Most of the other necromeleons held one or two metal boxes. Their vacant eyes contained the evil that charged them.

  My stomach wrenched when I glanced at Isidore. She had stopped moving. In her palm she held a shadowleaf. I assumed it had floated into her hand. Curiosity wriggled across her face, mesmerised by the dark energies within the leaf.

  Her fingers curled inwards. Slowly.

  “No!” I shouted, and with my gloved hand, I slapped the thing from her. It shot into the air and spun like any normal leaf would. It disappeared into the buckled floor.

  For a moment, Isidore looked ready to hit me, her eyes narrowing beneath a bloody brow. Confusion wiped away her fury, and with a shake of her head, she mumbled an apology.

  I didn’t reply, but swept the Witchblade overhead. Its flames snatched more of the fluttering shadowleaves from the air, each one flaring and sizzling. As the tiny fires died, a necromeleon stepped through the smoke, lit up by the raging flames. Absurdly, I recognised the walking dead man when I saw his belt buckle: Bud. His mouth dripped red, messy, still caked with Katrina’s blood. Behind him, more dead men and women emerged from the smoke and darkness. Their pale flesh reflected the sprouting fires. Bud didn’t move towards us. Indeed, they all allowed the shadows to play around their ankles, each of them settling dead eyes on us.

  It was as though the shadows had stopped their advancement.

  I didn’t waste time. I mimicked Victor’s moves from earlier and twirled the Witchblade above my head. With every revolution, the flames thickened to light the area. Sparks bounced harmlessly from me as I quickened that circular movement. The familiar, fresh smell of ozone displaced the smoking air, doing little to calm my racing heart. Round and round and round, brighter and brighter, and with a sudden jerk of my arm, I let fly the fire.

  It shot out and spread towards the necromeleons.

  The closer the sheet of flame got to the waiting dead, the wider it fanned out, and just before it enveloped the crowd, it separated into dozens of fireballs. Each one aimed at the chest of a chosen victim, engulfing it individually.

  All of them exploded in a brilliant flash.

  I turned my head and screwed my eyes tight as the brightness overwhelmed everything. Pieces of burning flesh flew around us. Something hot and wet hit my cheek.

  The Entity raged from within the Fabric. I sensed it smashing against the flames of the shrinking dome. Its scream pierced my brain and I yelled in triumph. I hoped it felt its minions burn. Seconds passed and the fire dwindled. At some point, I’d grabbed Isidore and held her head to my chest. We were safe—at least for the moment—from the Entity, yet the shadowplay appeared to be intensifying. The rippling phantoms meshed togethe
r. What was happening now?

  The shadows darkened…solidified, to become a newer, fresher, stronger, Fabric.

  A new Shadow Fabric? “Shit!” I shouted, and more Witchblade fire flared around us.

  A snap and crack echoed from above, and the balcony crashed into the reception area. Part of the roof slid downwards and belched a cloud of dust.

  “Georgie?” Isidore said.

  There he was, backing into the darkness under the buckled staircase, away from the settling heap of debris.

  Isidore ducked beneath the safety of the mounting Witchblade flames and ran towards the dog. Her hunched shoulders broke our protective barrier. In a swirl of criss-crossing sparks, the cool flames fell away.

  I screamed her name and ran after her. As my leg came down on the uneven floor, my knee gave out and I shot sideways. I fell onto my arm, luckily not stabbing myself with the Witchblade. Pain fired up into my thigh as I pushed myself into a crouch, testing my weight on the damaged knee.

  The new Shadow Fabric whipped an arm of darkness at Isidore. It smacked her to the ground and she tumbled close to a gaping hole. Fire licked along the marble chunks. As her head came up, the new Fabric closed in. A wall of eager shadows encircled her. They grew and allowed her one exit, a jagged burrow into darkness.

  The new Fabric flexed behind her.

  Isidore clutched the gun to her chest and a finger slid behind the trigger guard. She looked at me as I limped towards her. Damn my knee.

  She shook her head, lowering her eyes.

  “No!” I hurried. Each step sent lightning agony into my leg. This couldn’t happen, I wasn’t going to let it.

  This new Fabric wasn’t any larger than the original when Stanley pulled it from the violin case. Yet it seemed more lucid, more alive. I felt its evil invade my mind, seep into my thoughts. Snaking limbs of darkness reached for the scattered shadowleaves and snatched them up. They sparked on contact as strange energies criss-crossed the new Fabric’s surface…and into it. Shadows within shadows, charging the black mass. Each leaf sparked as the Fabric absorbed it.

  I yelled at Isidore as I staggered towards her and the new Fabric. Towards the fresh, brand new Fabric as it began to stitch itself. I saw those knitting threads of darkness interlinking and binding tight…

  And it was stitching around Isidore.

  “No!” I screamed. The essence of the new Fabric leaked into my senses. I tasted its influence, and God knew how Isidore felt.

  Defeat spread across her face.

  Eyes closed, she pushed the gun muzzle beneath her chin.

  CHAPTER 48

  I hurdled the yawning darkness and crashed beside Isidore on an explosion of pain. The new Shadow Fabric now surrounded us both. Although tiny in comparison to the one contained in the fiery dome, there could be no denying its power. On the edge of its folds the shadowleaves stitched, weaving threads of darkness.

  Isidore’s finger tightened on the trigger and the barrel sank into her flesh.

  Throbbing like a heartbeat, the Entity’s agony still raged in my brain. I clenched the Witchblade between my teeth and tore at the arms of shadow, wrenching them from the Fabric. They were slippery as my bare hand yanked on them. Clammy, sticky, slimy. It felt wrong and my stomach churned.

  Eyes wide, Isidore lowered her gun. In the gloom, surrounded by darkness, it would’ve been hard to miss her red face and tears. She slumped into herself as I worked around her. I slapped away a few black feelers while grabbing others. Regardless that I wore only one glove, my hands attacked the tentacles in a frenzy. I heard a growl from somewhere close and realised it was me.

  “Run!” I told her as I cleared an opening. I still had the knife in my mouth and was uncertain she heard.

  Seeing the small arch of freedom through the stitching mass of new Fabric, she flashed apologetic eyes at me and darted out.

  Having snakes of Fabric wrapped around my bare hand made me want to spew: I gagged, coughed, and again bit hard on the Witchblade. Cool fire sputtered down my chin. A trio of conflict raged through my head: the Entity’s pain, the new Fabric’s increasing power, and the Witchblade’s voices.

  The orange light flickered inside the envelope of darkness. The tentacles prodded and poked me in return, some still held shadowleaves and continued to stitch. I saw the tiny black fibres thread and loop, silvery sparks of energy knitting the leaves.

  I grabbed the closest shadowleaf and yanked it from its incomplete stitching, tearing the fibres apart. Discharged energy dripped away and hair-thin threads of Shadow Fabric curled and extended, reaching out for the half-stitched leaf. It was as if it pleaded for its return, like a dumped boyfriend on a park bench. It was the beggar for a coin. It was the newly born baby and the severed umbilical.

  In my palm, I held the shadowleaf, and silence fell on me. No longer could I hear the voices in my head, nor the roaring flames, or even the collapsing parts of the House. No more did I hear, or feel, the pounding of my heart, or the agony that was my knee. No more was the taste of bile in my throat threatening to reach up. Neither could I feel the blade between my teeth, nor the cool fire trickling down my neck as the Witchblade offered its help.

  All I felt was the clamminess of the leaf. It was as though I looked at a black and white photograph of a stigmata; a white palm surrounded by slightly curled fingers, with an irregular dark blob of suggested sanctuary. Or misery, inviting revelations, promises, and a chance to go to Heaven.

  No chance.

  There I stood, holding such a promise, surrounded by crevices that had given birth to creatures which belonged in Hell.

  But the stitching. That’s what was important…

  Stitch.

  I must stitch.

  And so I did.

  Stitching, the edges of the Fabric clammy to my touch, I accepted the invitation from a wisp of Fabric. The shadowleaves whipped around me and licked with the smothering darkness. Slivers of Fabric grasped my own fingers to join the stitching.

  I fell to my knees, feeling no pain from where I knew there should be. Nothing, only the energies pulsing within, rushing from me and into the tiny patch of darkness—of someone’s personal evil—in my hand. The Fabric, in a burst of renewed energy, took fuel from my life force and gave birth to more tentacles. Firstly in twos, then tens, then hundreds. Each of those tiny feelers slapped at the remaining shadowleaves, and they fluttered like the devil’s blossom.

  As I succumbed to the stitching, so did the Fabric resume stitching itself.

  From my peripheral, my gloved hand arced into view holding a white square. Neat, perfectly formed, and promising. Did this one hold a promise of sanctuary, unlike the irregular blob of corruption in my other palm?

  Heaven and Hell. White and black. Good and evil. This was a face-off between light and dark, as stark and true as any war since time immemorial.

  The white leaf in my hand—my shadowleaf, my impossibly white shadowleaf—burned fierce. My fingers were straight and proud. And in the other, my flesh greying, sat the black leaf. I raised my hands before my eyes. Both black and white leaves knitted with a loop of Fabric. Tiny threads linked and locked rigid with the darkness as if that segment of Fabric accepted an invitation to stitch.

  My hands came together.

  White and black, folding and pressing, they writhed as one. Stitch-stitch-stitch. Panicked. Hurried. Nothing else mattered. All there was, all there could be, was to stitch.

  Stitch-stitch.

  Darkness tangled my thoughts, plus what little memories I had. With my life force draining and fuelling the Fabric, blackness poured into my vision. It pushed aside the light…and the dark overtook it.

  For a moment my sense of feeling returned and my jaw slackened, and the Witchblade slipped out. A coldness seeped into my veins. I wasn’t sure if my eyes were closed, or if I was blind like Polly, or if my entire being had absorbed the darkness.

  Betrayed by my own senses, I succumbed to the stitching. My shoulders rounded and my body san
k. All I wanted to do was stitch.

  Recognising the approach of death was incredible.

  CHAPTER 49

  And like this to infinity.

  The cross-stitch of black and white leaf fibres stretched in all directions as the Shadow Fabric embraced me, like I was a traveller through a world of darkness stitched with darkness. The occasional thread zigzagged across my path, yet failed to restrict my speeding mind. Absent of feeling, I rushed through that black void, the curls of white twine now diluted by blackness.

  Eventually it was impossible to see even the black threads. The darkness, absolute. And in this stygian expanse, there would be no mistaking my death. My life ending. Had it ended already? Was it over? Was there nothing else other than my soul racing into the great oblivion, greeted with outstretched arms into a void where there is an all-consuming darkness? An infinity. The infinity.

  Where the stitching had taken over my will, it had transported my awareness into the very stuff which sapped my life force. As I travelled through that nothingness, I felt the essence of me shrink, my entire being diminishing into insignificance. This was an out of body experience to the extreme.

  Outside my mind, my body would be only dusty remains in a heap of clothes. But my thoughts should be nothing like that, it was all about the stitching. As I raced through darkness without end, I was a proud contributor to this amazing piece of work, to assist with the stitching of such beauty, and to be part of the construction of this incredible piece of fabric. The Fabric. The Shadow Fabric.

  Pure darkness, and there I was, travelling faster than light.

  The exquisite surroundings pressed in and I heard laughing—my own laughter. I was excitable, ecstatic. I was there, riding the Fabric. The darkness. The black.

  Without light…

  Yet the threads could be seen again. There was an occasional ridge in the expanse of darkness, tiny tracers of colour—white—within the darkness…just ahead.