Shadows Fall

by Simon R. Green

  No one had ever had a good word for Jack Fetch, protector of Time and of the town, but he had fought well and nobly against the Warriors of the Cross, and would have fought the Wild Childe, if he could. He deserved a better ending.

  “Is that it?” Rhea said finally. “Can my heart start beating now, or is he likely to get up again?”

  “No,” said Hart, fighting to keep the sickness out of his voice. “He won’t be coming back. Ever.”

  “First good news I’ve had all day,” said Rhea, putting the baby back on the bed. “At least we can relax a little now.”

  “No we can’t,” said Ash. “Something’s coming. It’s still coming. It’s very bad and it’s very close and it isn’t Jack Fetch.”

  By then they could all feel it; something great and malignant, too large to be easily understood, drawing nearer every moment like a runaway train. They would all have liked to run and hide, but there was nowhere they could go, and they knew it. They turned away from the bed, looking out into the gloom that filled the bedchamber, but the feeling came from everywhere at once, and they didn’t know where to look. And then suddenly he was there in the room with them, tall and striking and altogether horrible, and they flinched away from the twisted figure as they would from a blazing fire. He’d come as an angel, ten feet tall with perfect alabaster skin and flaring wings, but his bones were too large, and his form was hunched as though by the weight of his sins. His face was beautiful but very cold, and on his brow were two raised nubs that might have been horns, like the thorns on a rose.

  Of them all, only Ash didn’t flinch or fall back, or turn his face away, perhaps because being dead he had less to lose, but even so he had to try a few times before he could speak.

  “Who are you?” he said flatly. “What do you want here?”

  “Who am I?” said the corrupt angel, in calm, almost cultured tones. “How soon they forget. I have many names, but one nature. Call me Prometheus, if you like. The old jokes are always the best. As to what I’m doing here; this is my time, come round at last, and I can no longer be denied. I’m here to tear down the Galleries of Frost and Bone, undo Time, and break the lock on the Forever Door. Their time is over, their functions now irrelevant. My word shall be the Law, Life and Death will be what I choose to make of them, and yesterday and tomorrow will disappear in the hideous and unrelenting now. I have broken the doors of Hell, and I will not be put back again.”

  “Run that past me again,” said Ash. “I think I fell off at the corner.”

  “A sense of humour,” said the fallen angel. “Good. You’re going to need that where you’re going, you presumptuous shade. Please; make yourself comfortable, all of you. I’m here to kill Time, but there’s no hurry. The long war is finally over, I hold all the trump cards, and there’s nothing you can do to stop me. The oldest prophecy in Shadows Fall says that once the town has fallen, no man, living or dead, can hope to stand against me in my moment of triumph. So pardon me if I feel the need to preen a little. I’ve always been at my best before an audience, but then, ego was always one of my problems.

  “I’m behind everything that’s been happening; every unexpected turn and unfortunate choice. I’m the one who took control of the Wild Childe, and sent it out into Shadows Fall to kill and be killed. But I’m getting ahead of myself. In the beginning, I made myself known to Royce and his Warriors of the Cross, and offered them the power they thought they needed to take Shadows Fall for themselves. My price for that power was the many deaths they’d cause in taking the town. That’s why the Warrior officers encouraged their men to hate you so much, so there’d be deaths aplenty for me to feed on. Then there was dear Doctor Mirren. A simple, frightened man whose search for the answers behind Life and Death took him into unfortunate areas, and made him ever so vulnerable to my offers and seductions. Through him I discovered and negated the town’s defences.

  “I brought forth the Wild Childe early, placed it unknown and unsuspected in the perfect host, and had him kill the archangel Michael when he came to warn you. Dear Michael. So pure and honest and delightfully single-minded. Once he’d been thrown out of his host, it was child’s play for the Warrior sorcerers to keep him from coming back again. Once I’d manifested the Wild Childe, I had no choice but to let him kill every now and again; that was his function, after all, and if I didn’t indulge him he’d just fade away. There were clues to his identity, but you never worked it out; I kept you too busy and too distracted with other matters. Like dear Polly and her father.

  “I’ve been behind so many things. That’s my nature in this world, to be the worm in the apple, the smiler in the shadows, pulling the strings that make the world go round. I had the Warriors kill James’s parents, so that he would return to the town and reactivate the old prophecy. I like to think I cover all the angles. But I don’t need to hide in the shadows any more. All the deaths and suffering in the destruction of Shadows Fall have made me mightier than you can imagine, powerful beyond hope. It’s my turn now, to strut the stage and crack the whip. You are the last hope of the living, and all of you are powerless against me. But do feel free to try. I’d be disappointed if you didn’t try.”

  They all looked at each other, but none of them moved. The sheer presence of the fallen angel was enough to strike them dumb. He had the impact of a force of nature, like an earthquake or a cyclone or a thunderstorm, too huge and overwhelming for mere men to stand against.

  And then Sean Morrison struck an angry chord on his guitar and raised his voice in song. Of them all, he had something of the arrogance of the enemy they faced, perhaps because there had always been an undertone of darkness in rock-and-roll; the Devil’s music. It was a simple song, one of his old standards, setting his music defiantly against the surrounding gloom like a lighthouse in a storm. But even as he called up all the strength and potency of his music, he knew he was wasting his time. The angel just stood there, smiling, unaffected, and Morrison broke off in mid song. The angel applauded politely.

  “It’s been said the Devil has all the best tunes, but actually I’m tone deaf. It’s always been just noise to me. The opposition always got more out of music than I ever did.”

  A sudden thunder of shots filled the bedchamber as Rhea produced a handgun she’d taken from a dead Warrior and blazed away at the fallen angel. She pulled the trigger again and again until the gun was empty, and then she stopped, and slowly lowered it again. The echoes died quickly away. The angel hadn’t even blinked.

  “Well, really. I’m almost insulted. Bullets, against such as I? You hadn’t even carved a cross on them. Not that it would have made any difference at this stage, but I’m a great one for tradition.”

  “You want to talk about tradition,” said Mad, hefting her sword, “Let’s talk about tradition, scumbag. This is the sword Excalibur, and it remembers you.”

  She threw herself at the angel, the long blade-flashing bright as day as she brought it round in a wide arc. The angel caught the blade effortlessly with one hand in the middle of its swing, and snatched it out of Mad’s grasp. She stumbled forward, caught off balance, and the angel ran her through with her own sword. The blade slammed into her belly and punched out of her back in a spray of blood. Mad sank to her knees, and the angel jerked the sword out of her. She shuddered as the steel left her body, and blood spilled from her mouth. Morrison was quickly there, kneeling beside her, and she clutched at him with desperate strength. She tried to tell him something, but she couldn’t force the words past the pain and the blood. She died in his arms.

  “Nasty little toy,” said the angel, holding up Excalibur like a slug found in a salad. He snapped the blade neatly over his knee, and threw the pieces aside. “This has all been very amusing, but I think it’s time we moved on. I have so much to do. Beginning with Time’s death. Anyone want to say a few last words?”

  He stepped towards the baby lying on the bed, and Hart’s shadow leapt up off the floor and wrapped itself around the angel’s head like a blanket. H
e tore at the black stuff with his clawed hands, but it just oozed thickly between his fingers.

  “You’re going to have to stop him, Jimmy,” said Hart’s Friend desperately. “I can’t hold him for long.”

  The angel sank his fingers into the shadow and pulled Friend away from his face like sticky toffee. The shadow writhed and struggled in the angel’s hands, and then howled soundlessly as it was torn apart. The angel let the pieces fall to the ground, and grinned at Hart.

  “You can’t stop me. No one can stop me now. Time is helpless, and the Galleries are unprotected. I’ll set the Gallery of Bone on fire, and let the heat from the flames melt the Gallery of Frost. Shadows Fall is dead. Not a single living soul remains amid the ruins. The Wild Childe killed them all, and then they killed each other. You are the only survivors. I allowed you to get this far; I wanted someone here as witnesses to my triumph. In a moment I will kill Time, and then there will be no past, no present, no future; only an endless now, cut off from God, to do with as I choose for all eternity. And all the world will suffer as it never has before.”

  And then the Forever Door was suddenly in the room with them, and everything changed. The angel’s mood of despair was swept aside as though by a cool, refreshing breeze, and the room was suddenly alive with prospects and possibilities. The Door stood alone, unsupported, an enigmatic blank slate waiting to be written on. The angel stared at the Forever Door, struck dumb by an event he had neither planned for nor anticipated, and then he whirled and glared at the others.

  “I didn’t bring that here. Who dares bring that here? Send it away!”

  James Hart looked at the Forever Door, and it spoke to him on a level he’d never known before; speaking directly to the part of him that was descended from Time, and finally he understood what he had to do, what he’d been brought back to Shadows Fall to do. His purpose, his destiny, and the town’s.

  “It’s not your time come round,” he said to the fallen angel, almost casually. “This is my time. Time for me to do what I was born to do. You never did understand what the Forever Door really is. The Warriors almost had it right. They thought it was access to God. It is, in a way, but it’s more than that. Much more. The Forever Door existed so that the living might have access to what lies beyond life, but that was only part of its intent. I’m the last component in a centuries-long equation; I’m going to open the Door all the way and keep it open, so that all those who have left the world and passed on can come back through the Door, to rejoin the living. Death shall no longer have any hold over the living, nor any victory. Don’t look so surprised. A door, by its very nature, has always been an entrance as well as an exit.”

  “No,” said the angel. “No; I won’t let you! You can’t stop me. Neither the living nor the dead can have power over me. I was promised this!”

  “Should have read the small print,” said Hart.

  “I’ll stop you! I’ll kill you!”

  The fallen angel started towards Hart, and Ash stepped forward to block his way. “I don’t think so. To get to him, you’ve got to get past me. And since, technically speaking, I’m neither living nor dead, I have a feeling you are in deep trouble. In the material world, you’re bound by material rules. Which means, I’m going to kick your ass. That’s what I came back for.”

  The angel laughed harshly, and threw himself at Ash, who fell back a pace and then wrestled with the angel, calling up all his unnatural strength. They stamped back and forth, surging this way and that, and then the angel broke free and knocked Ash to the ground. He kicked the angel’s feet out from under him, and the two of them struggled together on the floor. The angel pinned Ash on his back, knelt on his chest, took a firm hold with both hands and ripped Ash’s head from his shoulders. Rhea screamed. The angel laughed, and tossed the head to her so that it rolled to a halt by her feet. The eyes glared unblinkingly at the corrupt angel, who started to get up, and then stopped abruptly as Ash’s headless body wrapped its arms tightly around him.

  Hart put them both out of his mind, and concentrated on what the Forever Door was saying to him. He could open the Door, but it was going to take every bit of power he had. He smiled wryly. He’d never wanted it anyway. He reached inside himself, and it was the simplest thing in the world to release all his power in one great outpouring. The fallen angel cried out in rage and dismay, but it was too late. Ash had distracted him just long enough. The Forever Door swung slowly open, and a brilliant light spilled out into the room. The angel shrank back, turning his face away from the light. And through the Door, striding confidently and freely, came Madeleine Kresh, not Mad any longer. She walked up to Morrison and smiled at him. He looked numbly back at her, wanting so much to believe in her, but not daring to touch her. She laughed and crushed him to her in her muscular arms.

  The Door swung wide open, and the light flared up, pushing the dark boundaries of the room further and further back until it seemed they were all standing on a vast open plain. Jack Fetch walked through the Door, bowed deeply to Hart, and then crossed over to bow and kneel to a suddenly adult Time, who clapped the scarecrow forgivingly on the shoulder. And behind him came Sheriff Richard Erikson, with his Deputies Lewis and Collins. They went to join Rhea and Ash, now fully restored by the light. They all knew without having to be told that he was no longer a revenant, but alive once more.

  Suzanne Dubois and Polly Cousins tripped through the Door together, giggling at the expressions on everyone’s faces. Polly went to Hart, and they hugged each other silently for a long moment, Friend wrapped around both their shoulders. Doctor Mirren came next, along with the Warrior Leader William Royce, both shaking their heads ruefully at how wrong they’d been. Lester Gold, the Mystery Avenger, young again, walked arm in arm with a revitalized Father Callahan. Derek and Clive Manderville walked in together, slapping each other’s shoulders and exchanging cheerful insults. And behind them came Bruin Bear and the Sea Goat and Peter Caulder and Scottie the Wee Terror, and behind them came Oberon and Titania and Puck, perfect at last. The dead were alive again, all hurts healed, all souls soothed, ready for whatever their strange new world might offer.

  The hosts of Faerie strode through the widening Door, followed by all the townspeople of Shadows Fall and all the Warriors of the Cross, and still people came streaming through the Door and out on to the limitless plain of light. James Hart found his mother and father again, and Time found his lost love. Parents were reunited with lost children, lovers with sweethearts, friends with enemies, all old scores forgotten and forgiven.

  Angels were everywhere, blazing bright in the unending dawn, their song filling all the world. No one noticed the fallen angel shrinking slowly smaller and smaller, made insignificant by the glory of the light, until only a tiny shadow remained, to be picked up and comforted by the archangel Michael.

  And still they came surging through the Door, in numbers beyond counting. All the dead of all the world, spilling out on to a plain without end. All who had ever died returned now from that undiscovered country, to walk with all the living in a new world, where all that was old would be made new again, where death would be but a memory, and where things would be very different, this time. Someone cleared His throat, and everyone turned to look.

  The shadows had fallen, all prophecies fulfilled, and the light was everywhere.