by James Fahy
“Maybe I should call the front desk,” I heard the guard say, his voice now muffled through the door. “Have someone come and sort you out. I’d help you down there myself, but… I’m not supposed to leave my post.”
There was the sound of gathering books, and the unsteady click of Lucy’s shoes as she stood. I could picture her in my mind, wobbling like a baby bambi, gripping the handrail like a helpless waif.
“No, I think… I think it’s okay,” she said. I heard her giggle a little. “Oh Jesus, I’m so embarrassed. I can’t believe I just threw myself down a flight of stairs. You must think I’m the clumsiest person ever. I’m so sorry to bother you.”
“Well, if you’re sure you’re alright?” I heard him reply gruffly, sounding uncertain. “You don’t need me to call someone-”
“No, no, really. I think I just shocked myself. I’ll put some ice on it when I get home… okay… thanks.” I could hear him handing her books. “Aw, you’re too sweet. Rushing over to my rescue like that.” She sniggered again.
I rolled my eyes in the dark, smirking. Lucy, my geeky sidekick and her expert knowledge of feminine wiles. Turns out even Cabal Ghosts were human after all. What man could stand stonily by as a sylphlike waif tumbled helplessly down a staircase?
“What’s this?” I heard her ask, as their voices moved away from the staircase.
“My card. Just… I know good medical people,” I heard him mutter, sounding a little flustered. “Ice on it, but you know… if you find you need treatment or anything, give me a call. My name’s Kevin.”
“Lucy. That is so sweet of you, Kevin.” I heard her trill. “You’re a regular ole knight in shining armour. I’m sure it will be fine though… just shocked myself. Always have had two left feet. I’m so sorry for disturbing you.”
My mouth gaped. She got his number? Seriously. If I’d tried that ruse myself and thrown myself down a flight of stairs, he’d probably have just taken a picture with his phone of me splattered like a pancake at the foot of the stairs to upload to the DataStream later.
Lucy’s footsteps receded down the stairs of the tower, toward the ground floor. I could picture her staggering slightly under the weight of her bookstack, every inch posing as the diligent student.
The Cabal Ghost returned to the other side of the door against which I was pressed. I heard the floorboards creak under his shoes, and I backed away from the door as quietly as possible, breathing a sigh of relief.
I actually felt a little sorry for the guy. She was never going to call him. His teeth weren’t sharp enough for her tastes. Bless his heart.
Chapter 12
Turning away from the door and breathing a sigh of relief, I found myself in a short corridor, which soon opened out to a wide balcony which ran on all four sides around the room below. The walls of this dimly lit gallery were lined with books, right up to the domed ceiling above me where a circular glass oculus let in light and drummed heavily with rain. There was no one else up here on the balcony with me. I’d been in this part of the library before. Below, the wide open space I overlooked was filled with long tables, usually study spaces. Peering tentatively over the dark wood balustrade, I saw only one of the tables below was occupied. Understandable, since the room had been closed off for a private gathering. I wasn’t sure who or what I expected to see down there. A gaggle of sinister vampires perhaps plotting world domination, or a circle of red-hooded cultists swinging incense burners and giving each other complicated handshakes. What I hadn’t expected to see, was five well-dressed older men in crisp dark suits, arranged around a study table like a mafia gathering. I knew at least two of their faces. They were high level Cabal. Director of the Board level. I couldn’t say who the other three were, but they were all radiating the same mixture of power and work-related ulcers.
I crouched down quietly behind the railings, feeling like a bat fluttering around the belfry of a gothic tower. I was glad of the dim lights. I was practically invisible in the deep shadows up here. I’d been interviewed by some of the directors before. It had been when I’d first met Director Coldwater. She had seemed the most human of them at the time. The rest were powdery old-boys.
I say interviewed… interrogated would be a better term. A couple of the directors below me were familiar from that warm encounter.
What the hell were the super-highs of Cabal doing holding a private meeting away from the surely-more-secure walls of the Liver, Cabal’s fortified HQ across town? And who on earth had tipped me off about it happening in the first place?
“I’m only suggesting that steps may need to be taken,” the reedy voice of one of the old men drifted up to me in the darkness. He sounded irritable. “Or we should at least make preparations to intervene, if the situation requires it.”
One of his companions, a silver-haired and sour-faced skeletal figure, steepled his fingers, elbows resting on the table top. “It’s not as simple as that, Gregory, you know that. We all have our own… projects, our own divisions.”
“And we don’t interfere in each other’s work,” a third suit added, nodding and making his ample jowls wobble.
“Unless… it poses a threat to the overall stability,” the first man insisted. “Order, above all things, must be maintained, that’s the way of Cabal.”
“We have no proof that the current situation does pose a threat,” Jowly shrugged. “The work we do comes with certain factors, we all accept this. But it doesn’t mean we can go around poking our fingers into each other’s pies simply because we don’t agree with it.”
The man named Gregory stiffened. “I think what is happening in the city is ample proof,” he argued in a hushed hiss. “The deaths, the disappearances. It’s already out of hand, and trying to mop up after a spill is a lot more bother than simply capping the bottle before it topples in the first place.”
“From what was released on the initial research proposal brief,” a fourth member of the table said, looking around at his companions with lazy eyes. His voice was a deep drawl. “This is tied in with improvement, modification and eventually reversal of the degenerative condition. It’s a valid cause, in my opinion.” Several of the other nodded. “However,” he added pointedly. “While it’s true that advancement… any advancement…comes with sacrifice, there is a limit to how many eggs need to be broken to make an omelette, gentlemen. I agree, to some extent, with Gregory. The situation should be monitored, but as of yet, things appear… contained. We have continued to turn a blind eye to what has been happening in the Slade.”
Silver-hair nodded. “Observation is crucial,” he said. “All we have to go on so far is CCTV footage showing the party in question potentially colluding with those silent, robed things, and indication that a long-shelved and failed project may have been dusted off.” He sighed down his nose. “Nothing concrete. Too many potentialities and maybes. Certainly not enough to openly confront and bring it officially before the board.”
Several of the men nodded in agreement. The one named Gregory opened his mouth to protest, but Silver-hair held up a hand. “Observation… but no intervention. Not until we know there is no other option. It would set a worrying precedent amongst us, would it not?” They all exchanged glances around the table with one another. Even from my lofty vantage point I could see the mistrust amongst them. “Policing each other’s avenues?” He glanced at Gregory. “I’m sure none of us would gladly open our project files to each other for scrutiny so happily. We each have our own interests, our own divisions. In this case-”
“In this case, there is mental instability to be considered,” Gregory snapped. “Yes, I’ve said it. You all know that judgement can be compromised if we do not remain objective.”
“You do not sound objective, sir,” Jowly pointed out.
“I wasn’t referring to myself, as well you know,” he countered witheringly. “Conducting advanced research like this from a neutral standpoint is one thing, but when there is a personal agenda at work… and I believe this to be the ca
se… it drives against everything Cabal is.”
“Should the situation with Seraph get out of hand-” Hooded-eyes began. My ears perked up at the angelic reference.
“You don’t think it’s out of hand?” Gregory asked. “We’re not talking about the Slade anymore. It’s no longer an invisible situation. Children are missing. High-profile children. The general population is sighting things in our streets that even we don’t understand. This could spiral dangerously, if we do not, as the board of senior directors, cast a majority vote to-”
“I would remind all present that this is not a shareholders meeting,” Silver-hair said crisply. “Resources are being directed towards the Seraph issue. I suggest a time stamp before any… intervention. The Genetic Others’ ridiculous festival must come and go, blasted bloodsuckers need their moment in the limelight. If… control… has not been regained by then, we will then reconvene.”
Hooded-eyes nodded. “And if more children are taken in the interim? Or if this unknown anomaly becomes more aggressive still?”
“One cannot close Pandora’s box,” Jowly pointed out, shaking his head. “I agree, if any project becomes a true liability, it… and those involved… should cease to be. But to do so quietly is more complicated than any of us have attempted before. Let us wait and watch.”
“I’m concerned with how close certain elements of our organisation have become with the Genetic Others of late,” Silver-hair nodded. “I don’t dismiss your concerns, Gregory. But if it becomes apparent that we have lost our… neutrality… in GO matters, rest assured action will be taken. Be brave in all things. Manna does not fall from heaven unless we rattle it.”
A scuffling noise on my level made me jump. I looked up, startled from my eavesdropping, and peered across to the opposite balcony. There was a short corridor up there too, mirroring the one I had entered the gallery from, and silhouetted in its frame, there stood a figure.
It was a girl, pale as a ghost, with long light hair.
I froze, my hands gripping the bannister rail of the balcony.
She was peering directly at me with interest, dressed in what appeared to be a simple and plain white sleeveless dress, oddly squared and falling to her knees in length, like the robe of an old Greek goddess. In the gloom of the unlit balcony, standing across the wide space from me, she seemed to almost glow softly in the dark. Like an angel.
Before I could react, only a split second after I had seen her and she had noticed my attention, the girl vanished.
I don’t mean by this that she ran off or ducked out of sight. She actually vanished. There one second, gone the next, simply empty air and shadow where she had stood, like a dissipating ghost.
I stared at the empty space, disbelieving, blinking rapidly. Had it been a trick of my mind?
“I don’t believe in fairies,” I whispered under my breath to myself. The hair on the back of my neck was standing to full attention. The apparition had gone, utterly, if it had ever been there at all.
Had I really just seen her? People don’t wink in and out of existence. I had spied her for only a fraction of a second. It was possible my mind was playing tricks on me.
The men below me were still talking and arguing amongst themselves, but I was no longer listening. Thunder rumbled overhead, lazy and long, as the rain pelted the domed glass roof, a constant murmuring tattoo.
It was then, frozen to the spot and still staring at the balcony opposite where I had seen the girl, that my blood froze.
Something else moved in the deep shadows over there. Up against the book stacks. Hiding in the dark. I caught the motion immediately out of the corner of my eye. I wasn’t the only eavesdropper on this meeting of Sinistercorp.
And this wasn’t an angelic child I could just about make out. It was large, a hulking shadow standing in the dark across from me.
My skin felt ready to crawl off my body and slink away. I couldn’t see its face, but I could feel it watching me, staring out silently and malevolently across the space. My nose caught a faint smell. Burned meat? Charcoal?
I had no idea how long this shadowy being had been standing at the handrail opposite, watching me, engrossed as I had been in the conversation below. Had it been there as I’d entered? Had it been watching me quietly the whole time?
As though acknowledging that I had finally noticed it, the shape shifted, moving its weight from one foot to the other. My heart pounded, primal terror drowning me, freezing my breath. I didn’t dare move or rise from my crouch.
The being raised a long arm, I could just make out the shape in the shadows. It seemed to be wearing a long and tattered sleeve, torn and shredded. When it was fully raised, its long palm on level with its blank, dark face, it did something that made my throat go dry. Slowly, it wiggled its long fingers.
The demon in the dark was giving me a playful, childish wave.
A flash of lightning flickered outside, light from the oculus above strobing the gallery and room below for a split second in harsh black and white, and I saw the figure’s face. Black, hollow eyes, surrounded by cracked and smudged paint in a carefree, decorative fashion. Its bald head and face were pitch black and looked rough and cracked, like the surface of burnt wood or brittle, roasted meat. And its smile…
Its smile was a wide grin which reached far beyond the corners of any sane mouth, stretching up and obliterating the cracked and blackened cheeks, teeth clenched together in a wide and deranged rictus that stretched from ear-to-ear. Its cracked and mottled chin slick with spittle and drool.
Around the nightmare’s neck was a tattered, ruined ruff, above a ragged torn shirt spattered with countless overlapping stains.
In the hand that was not waving to me, dark fingers still wiggling slowly in the air, it clutched a black balloon on a string, bobbing gleefully.
All of this I saw in a second, in the horrible flash of lightning, before it passed and fell back into darkness, once more nothing but shadow on shadow.
I fell back in alarm from my crouch, landing on my butt on the floorboards. Any sound I made was thankfully obliterated by the almost immediate and deafening roar of thunder. So close to the lightening meaning the storm was now directly overhead us.
Blinking wildly, trying to get my eyes to adjust to the dark again, I scrambled in a panic to my feet. There was the scraping of chairs from far below. The men were getting up. Their meeting apparently at its end.
I couldn’t care less. The only thing that held my attention was the abomination I had just glimpsed, and the fact that I had now lost sight of the nightmarish creature. Frantically I scanned the gallery on all sides. Where had it gone? Was it headed towards me?
But a brief sliver of light in the short corridor opposite me told me otherwise. Whatever the hell that thing was, it had just slipped out of the opposing door. It had made its silent exit under the cover of the thunder’s peal.
I couldn’t go back the way I’d come. The Cabal Ghost was still guarding the door behind me. The suited men below would be leaving the reading space by doors down on their own level too. And my only lead had just slipped away.
A burned and grinning abomination, exuding pure malevolence and leering in the shadows at me like Lucifer himself, had just fled the scene.
That demon had taken two girls. Two helpless children trapped with that monster. And here I was just sat on my arse, letting the perp go because I was too scared to do my job.
I’m Phoebe Harkness, I reminded myself, adrenaline curdling towards determination. I follow trouble, remember? We scientists, we run toward the unknown.
Creeping stealthily around the balcony, keeping out of sight of those below, I gave chase to the demonic thing.
There was no Cabal Ghost guarding this door, I noted, as I slipped through it and out into the corridor beyond. Presumably, this part of the library didn’t have outside access. No danger of students or other library users disturbing the senior directors’ chinwag from here.
Part of my brain unhelpfully po
inted out that if there was no way in, this also meant there was no way out from this side either.
Good, I told it. That means the thing can’t get away from me.
I stared up and down the corridor I found myself in. It looked utilitarian, clearly behind-the-scenes staff administration. There were no books here, though plain and empty as it was, the corridor was still old, with dark boards underfoot and a roof which arched away overhead. Unused and abandoned, it was only dimly lit at intervals with plain globe lights. Dividing the space in both directions into pools of alternating light and shadow receding away. The wall opposite me was studded with tall windows against which the rain pelted. On a sunny day, it would have been clear to see. But with the October storm raging outside, it was darker than evening here.
I stared in both directions, trying to guess which way my horrifying quarry had run. There was a strong smell of barbequed meat in the air, dark and rancid, and somehow oily. I’d smelled it in my bedroom the night before. The same malevolence. It smelled like corruption. Away to the right, something resting against the ceiling caught my eye. The black balloon, abandoned, bobbed against the arched roof space, looking like a fat fly cocooned in a spider’s web.
Bingo.
I ran off after it. The corridor had no other exits but ended at a T-junction. What I planned to do if I caught up with the thing was something I was trying not to focus on. This entity had possibly been the one to stuff an old governess in a piano. I wasn’t armed. I didn’t even have my Taser. Was I hoping to subdue it with a Chinese burn?
Pausing at the junction, I held my breath, listening. Truth be told, I didn’t know if I could catch it. I just wanted to see it. To confirm that it really was real. Had it been just another fevered hallucination? Like Dove and Allesandro in my apartment? I don’t believe in demons or angels. This creature had been dressed like some ancient clown, a scorched and crusted harlequin from hell. But was it infernal? There was another explanation, there had to be, and I wanted to find it.
