Paper Children

by James Fahy

  We all whipped our heads upwards at the sound of the hissing vents.

  “No time,” the girl clipped. “You need to be up there. They don’t want him to kill all the humans. He’s just a messy complication. They only ever wanted me.”

  She struck out and grabbed us both, her small hands clamping over our wrists. One on mine, one on the vampire.

  Her hands were as cold as ice, they almost burned.

  I stared at this once-human child, now melded with Bonewalker genetics, and then someone pulled the rug out of the universe. The room, the red light, the screams of the Pale and the deadly and final hiss of the gas, all blew apart like smoke, and the three of us fell instantly into a cold, howling blackness.

  Away from hell. Into the void.

  Chapter 38

  Sometimes, when I’m lying in bed at night, on the cusp of sleep, I suddenly feel I am falling. My brain, half in the realm of dreams and half in the walking world, will panic, and my whole body suddenly jolts. It’s a fairly common phenomenon.

  In medical terms, its known as a hypnic jerk. When I was a child, I used to believe the old theory that it was your body waking you up in a panic when falling in a dream, and that if ever you hit the ground before you woke up, you would die in the real world. I’m an adult now though, and a doctor. I know that what’s really happening in a hypnic jerk is nothing more than a feeling caused by a sudden muscle twitch. As we begin to fall asleep, our muscles start to slacken, to stop us acting out our dreams. The brain can interpret this sensation as falling. In panic response, when confused, the brain will send urgent signals to fire the muscles. To keep the balance.

  I knew all this, but, tumbling through the void, for half a second existing nowhere and everywhere, the physical sensation was like a hypnic jerk on loop, and part of me, the child we never truly grow out of, desperately tried to wake up before I hit the floor and died.

  Cold wind suddenly buffeted my face, and I felt the hard floor smack beneath my hands and knees. It was the first moving air I had felt in a while, and its temperature and motion was such a shock it took my breath away. Noise rushed in all around me. Voices, crowds cheering and shouting. The sounds of many people. A repeating crackle-bang of fireworks from above and, incredulously, booming over carnival speakers, the opening bars of Springsteen’s ‘Dancing in the Dark’.

  My eyes shot open as I felt the strange, unearthly girl release my hand, and, disoriented, I stared around, taking in my surroundings.

  We were out. We were back in the streets, far from the Castle too.

  We hadn’t died.

  The cold night air whipped around me wonderfully, a few stray and papery leaves blowing across the flagstones between my fingers. Oxford’s beautiful buildings reared up all around me, their spires and stonework faces majestic in the Halloween night. Projectors aimed at the facades all around were painting the usual golden stone walls in garish, funhouse colours. Pinks and greens and orange. Above them, in a star-studded sky as rich as ink, fireworks exploded over and over like supernovas.

  I stood, shakily, feeling my balance restoring and the nausea fading from me. My whole body was shaking with spent adrenaline. Another second, just one more, and we would have been dead. I took in a deep, ragged breath, the icy autumn air in my lungs was the most euphoric thing I had ever tasted. The cold air bit at my cheeks. Allesandro was getting to his feet beside me, shaking his head to clear it. The fireworks and laser show lights all around painted his pale skin like a surreal rainbow.

  I know my city well, and it only took a moment, staring around and acclimatizing to being free of the subterranean facility, for me to pinpoint where we were.

  We had landed, if that was the correct Bonewalker-friendly term, in a large paved square, set aside from the road off to our left, which was packed with hundreds of people, chanting and cheering in the dark, their breath escaping in cold plumes. To our right soared the churchlike exterior of the divinity school, part of the Bodleian Library. Tall, leaded windows set in deep stone marching away along the side of the building were reflecting the fireworks above like sparkling geodes. On the other side, to our left was Broad Street, clearly the parade route, separated from us by a wall and wrought iron fence, which was punctuated at regular intervals by vast carved heads. Stone visages staring out from the square and into the city, their faces carved in various expressions. Wild hair and stone beards guarding the courtyard we now stood unsteadily in.

  The crowds were on the other side of the wall.

  I rubbed my eyes as the last vestiges of dizziness and unreality faded from me, and my legs began to feel steadier. The girl, or whatever she had now become, had taken a good couple of steps back from us, looking wary, as though worried we might vomit on her feet.

  Over the deafening cheering and music, and the occasional bright peal of flame as a fire-eating vampire somewhere in the crowd spewed liquid light into the night air, the music blared, echoing off the walls all around us.

  “Can’t start a fire,” it boomed, rolling around the city. “Can’t start a fire without a spark…”

  “Allesandro, look,” I said, finding my voice. “We made it. We’re at the theatre.”

  Across the flagstones before us, standing large and proudly between the stone-headed wall to our left and the glittering flank of the divinity school on our right, the Sheldonian Theatre was currently bathed in bright orange Halloween spotlights.

  Wren’s own design, modelled was after the theatre of Marcellus in ancient Rome. Echoes of this ancestry embedded in its design make it a formidably strong and beautiful structure, with theatricality seeping from every carved decoration. What better place for Dove, ever the showman, to end his dramatic parade and begin his massacre. It exuded drama even on a normal day, but now, gaudily spot-lit in the night and with lasers rolling arabesque designs across its imposing stonework like electric ghosts, it looked like an ancient and impressive carnival sideshow. A stunning palace of a haunted house for the king of Halloween.

  The music rolled and echoed around the walls of the courtyard like the ocean roaring in a cove. “Even if we’re just dancing in the dark.”

  The crowds from the street had begun to pour into the courtyard. The city outside this space was packed and chaotic. Many were still in joyous celebration, wrapped up warm against the cold Halloween night, glow-sticks and sparklers in their hands. Others, beyond the crowds pouring through the bottleneck into the courtyard, were waving protesting placards, the faces of Melodie Cunningham Bowls and the other missing girls bobbing in large photographs on sticks above the crowd. In the flickering, multi-coloured light of Fangfest, they looked like sacrificial tributes. The entire street beyond, as far back as I could see, was densely packed with people. I could see pockets of protests and violent scuffles breaking out here and there, but they were lost in the noise and the chaos, drowned out by the booming music, the fireworks, and noise.

  And everywhere we looked through the crowds, vampires moved, twirling and twinkling, resplendent in their harlequin carnival costumes, grinning white flashing teeth from beneath mardi-gras masks, enthralling and astounding the humans all around them with their magnetic presence.

  It was like watching a shiver of sharks leisurely swim through a tight shoal of clueless fish, just waiting for the cue to strike.

  And Dove was inside their minds, every single one of them.

  “The crowds are so thick,” I said to Allesandro. “When he gives the signal, and the vampires attack… they’re going to have nowhere to run.”

  I could already picture the panic. The chaos spreading out through the crowd as they trampled one another in their attempts to escape. People would be crushed. The vampires lashing out with tooth and claw, cutting them down from deep within their defenceless ranks. There were kids in the crowd. Happy grinning faces turned upwards in gleeful wonder at the fireworks overhead. Parka hoods and woolly hats pulled tight over cold ears as they rode on their parents’ shoulders, around and between the now st
ationary parade floats which had reached the end of the long and slow trek through the city, all the way from St Giles.

  I wondered if Oscar and Lucy were out there in the crowd somewhere, being jostled along, trying to make their way here, to fight through the masses to the theatre where Dove had promised the people of New Oxford a grand finale.

  And Cloves and Chase… if they had made it up in the elevator, they would even now be way across town, only just spilling out of the dark and empty shell of Oxford Castle, their young charges in tow. Too far away to be of any help to us now. What would the ragged homeless colony who lived on the grassy hill of Castle Mound make of that sight? Twelve small and ghostlike children spilling out of that empty ruin into the all-hallows air, dressed in white. Spirits released from the castle.

  The crowds moved around us as they flooded into the square, pushing us towards the theatre, and I grabbed Allesandro’s arm before we could be pulled apart. As the thick press of bodies milled around us, I looked around desperately for the Seraph girl, but Melodie Cunningham Bowls had gone. Whether she had slid away through space with her Bonewalker abilities, or simply taken the opportunity to slide away into the shadows, I didn’t know. I hadn’t even had a chance to thank her for dragging us out of our deaths, and she was gone.

  If she had any sense, she would be far away. Given what was about to happen here, this was the worst possible place for anyone to be.

  “Where is Dove?” I yelled to Allesandro over the roar of the festival and crowds. It looked as though the procession had ended here just before we had arrived, but the blonde-haired psychopath was nowhere to be seen.

  The vampire shook his head, scanning the crowd, his eyes roaming over human and vampire alike. “I don’t know, I don’t see him, Doctor. But wherever he is, we have one slim advantage over him.”

  I found it hard to believe we had any such thing. We were being carried along by the crowd towards the façade of the theatre itself, which loomed above and before us.

  “What the hell is that?” I asked.

  He squeezed my hand a little. “He believes we’re both already dead.” He shot me a wolfish grin, his narrowed and angry eyes looking devilish. “He won’t be expecting us. Dove thinks he’s already won.”

  As the music ended, the square behind us now packed to bursting with Helsings, hellions and happy Halloweeners, the fireworks above reached a dramatic crescendo, lighting up the sky in a glittering spectacle of ruby red and emerald green explosions, so bright and layered so thickly over one another that for a brief span of moments, they seemed to chase away the night altogether, bathing the streets below as bright as day. I wondered how our city looked from the outside right now, a flickering beacon lighting up the dark and abandoned countryside in all directions. What did the Pale, who roamed that lightless, silent and blasted wilderness beyond our walls, make of it all? The several dozen that we had just escaped may well be lying dead now, in choking heaps in the silent secret spaces far beneath the city streets, but out there in the dark, millions more waited. An endless army. Even now, were countless heads turning out there in the dark and silent countryside, to view our high wall, our oasis of civilisation, illuminated like a glittering beacon?

  Mankind has always chased away the darkness with light and celebration. But this was not mankind’s festival. This was Dove’s vampire doing. And the population of New Oxford, out in force, both the lovers and the haters of Genetic Others in equal measure, were in no way being invited to gather around a safe flame. They were being herded and lured toward the lights, corralled in preparation for slaughter.

  With a flourish of movement, a huge banner unfurled from the crown of the Sheldonian, unravelling from the rooftop and unrolling as it descended, cracking like a ship’s mast in a high wind. It was wider than the largest cinema screen, almost covering the curving side of the theatre that faced into the square completely.

  People cheered with wild enthusiasm, as people in crowds are prone to do whenever excitement is running high and anything at all happens, and four or five vampires detached themselves from the crowd, rushing forward to catch ropes affixed to the bottom of the vast canvas, swiftly and efficiently fixing it to bolts along the length of its lower edge which were waiting on the floor, pulling it tight and taut with practised ease.

  As they fell back, the vast canvas lit up, a huge projection of the Fangfest logo emblazoned across the screen. This grew further cheers and contrasting jeers and shouts of protest from the crowd below in equal measure.

  The fireworks died away, and the projected logo faded, replaced with the image of Dove, stories high. He was dressed, as always, in a long white jacket and pale clothes, appearing messianic with his crown of long hair tumbling around his shoulders. His eyes were hidden beneath a white carnival eye-mask, carved to look playfully demonic, like the frowning face of a statue carved from chalk. It also hid the jewelled stud between his eyebrows, the tip of the PAPER technology embedded deeply in his brain.

  Raising his hands in greeting, he smiled down at the crowds, the noise and roar increasing in reaction.

  “This looks live,” I said to the vampire at my side. “Where is he filming from?”

  The projector currently throwing Dove’s image onto the huge screen must have been set up in the upper stories of the building opposite, but the link to where it was live-streaming him could have been from anywhere.

  From speakers set all around the square and surrounding streets, Dove’s voice came as he addressed the crowd regally.

  “People of New Oxford!” he cried, his amplified voice bouncing off the building like the voice of Zeus. “Welcome! Welcome all of you, to the culmination of Fangfest!”

  There were loud cheers. The air was filled with glowsticks and light-up pumpkins waved in frenzy. Thousands of lit up DataPads and phone screens waving in the air. Others screamed and shouted in anger and indignation, jostled about in the crowds. Several small projectiles were thrown at the screen by GO haters.

  Allesandro was scanning the buildings all around us. His keen eyes searching for our quarry.

  “I have planned this celebration…” Dove continued, his amplified voice echoing into the night. “…for a long, long time! Halloween! A night in which humanity has always recognised the darkness! A night when you have always acknowledged that there are other forces in the world than your own! Happy Halloween.”

  More cheering. The crowd surged around us, jostling me at my shoulder. I was searching the masses. Between the many bundled Helsings and celebrators, all moving around like a giant open-air festival, the vampires stuck out. Every one of them I saw, was stock still, like statues as the crowd ebbed and flowed around them, a sea around rocks. Their pale faces serious, each one trained on the screen above them, waiting.

  “For countless years, in the old world,” Dove was telling the crowds, his voice coming from every direction at once. “My kind hid in the shadows. We preyed on your ancestors, and your ancestors feared us. We were creatures of the night!” His face on the screen split into a wide, disarming grin. “The stuff of legend and nightmares.”

  This drew cheers and laughter from the crowds around us, and more than a few catcalls.

  “After the Sentinel crisis,” Dove continued. “The old world ended, and we were forced out of the shadows, to live amongst you. The great emergence, as we call it.” He nodded, his smile fading as he assumed solemnity. “Now we all exist together, here in this city… and in others like it. And yes! There have been tensions. Yes, there has been mistrust. Prejudice and suspicion. But the vampire clans of New Oxford have worked for thirty long years to convince you all… that we mean… no harm.”

  This drew thunderous applause from the Helsing portions of the crowd. Air-horns all over the square blasted into the night.

  “We have accepted our cohabitation with humanity! And you, you lovers of vampires and sons and daughters of the night, you have ceased to fear us!”

  I had a rising sense of impending dread. “
Allesandro,” I said with urgency.

  “I know,” he hissed in response.

  “Fangfest is my way to bring us all out together, under the night sky,” Dove raised his hands palm upwards beatifically. “To bring your people and my people together, on an even field. So that never again, can there be any doubt left amongst us as to who we all are, and where… we all stand.”

  My vampire suddenly drew me back a step, looking upwards. “There.” I followed his gaze, up and up, beyond the giant screen from which Dove was conducting his sermon.

  “He’s on the roof of the theatre.”

  The roof of the Sheldonian boasts a prominent eight-sided cupola, an angular decorative stubby premonition, sitting atop the wide flat roof like a squat phallic hat. A verdigris dome with leaded glass windows filling each of its octagonal faces. Standing before it, barely visible from down here, and speaking into a recording drone set before him on a tripod, Dove lurked like a roosting albino bat. His coat was flapping around his ankles in the chill wind, billowing like ghostly sheets, giving him the appearance from down here of a ghostly apparition.

  “I’m going up,” Allesandro said, dropping my hand, and elbowing his way forward towards the carved face of the building.

  “Allesandro, the entrance is out in the street,” I called after him.

  “I’m not going inside,” he called back. “Wait here.”

  As I watched, he cleared the front of the crowd, scrambling up to grab purchase on the decorative stonework of the sheer wall of the theatre at the right-hand side of the screen. He began to scramble up the exterior of the building, seeking footholds and finger holes here and there in the decorations of the stonework of the high arches.

  He was ascending like a spider, with remarkable dexterity. My gaze travelled upwards. Above the first level arches was a second storey of tall windows ringed in stone, and beyond those the rooftop was encircled by a tall balustrade balcony. The cupola, lit by the wash of funhouse lights, behind it.