The Everlasting

by Tim Lebbon

  CHAPTER FOUR

  a book blighted by death

  It took them almost an hour to get into Cardiff. He had driven this way hundreds of times before, but now everything seemed new. The row of warehouse shops—Carpetland, PC World, Mothercare—were cathedrals to lost causes. Hundreds of cars were parking in their forecourts even now, disgorging hapless couples or hassled families to be swallowed into the shops’ maws, seeking goods and services that would make their lives seem less difficult and more valued. A new set of curtains might lift a couple’s spirit for a few days. A fresh set of toys for their growing youngster could make them feel as though they were being good parents, the shine in their child’s eyes evidence enough. They spent for comfort and shopped for peace, and all the while their bodies carried them inexorably toward a time and place where none of this would matter anymore.

  Because at the end of it all—past the hugs and kisses, the promises and lies, the smiles and nods and the knowing frowns, the gratitude and anger, the tears and the all-too-brief instances of clear, unhindered happiness that sometimes exploded a moment away—there was death.

  And for some, that was when the real adventure began.

  “Who is in the Wide?” Scott asked. He was looking around as he drove, staring into other cars, where drivers and passengers sat immersed in their own private worlds. Most of them looked glum and sad; a few talked into hands-free phones. One or two smiled, but only briefly; perhaps they were remembering yesterday or looking forward to tonight.

  “It’s not a place for people.”

  “Are you there?”

  “I have been.”

  “The ghosts I saw . . . those things in my garden . . . I saw them when I said the words Papa taught me.”

  “A rhyme from the Chord of Souls. It touches your vision; that’s all.”

  “I felt everything growing so much wider. A huge potential.”

  “They were wraiths. Echoes of lost souls.”

  “They seemed more than that.”

  “Lewis presented them that way.”

  Scott edged forward and then stopped again at a set of traffic lights. He glanced to his right and a woman looked away, embarrassed. We’re so private in these moments, he thought. Shouldn’t we be chatting while we sit here? Windows down, talking, being a part of each other’s day? He stared at the woman until she glanced back, but then felt ashamed of making her uncomfortable. “So Lewis is in the Wide.”

  “It’s the only place he can be without . . .”

  “He was here, but it hurt him.”

  Nina nodded. “It would. It does. He’s in pain.”

  “He must want what you have very much.” He watched her for a reaction, but her face gave away nothing. She did not even blink.

  The lights changed and they moved on, two lanes filtering into one. “Where are we aiming for?”

  Nina read Papa’s note again. “A public house close to the castle. Across the road. Down in the ground.”

  “The cellar?”

  “Deeper.”

  “You read all that from the note?”

  “It gives me a map in my mind.”

  “Papa was clever.”

  Nina smiled. Scott saw the expression in the rearview mirror, which he had angled slightly to the left so that he could see her mouth, chin, scarred neck. He did not think the smile was something he was meant to see.

  “He was,” she said.

  “What’s the name of the pub?”

  “I’ll know it when we’re there. The language he used can’t make names.”

  Papa, you were such a mystery to us all. Scott thought of their walks in the countryside, those brief snatched moments newly remembered when Papa had tried to tell him something important. Somehow they had been hidden in his memory—or hidden by his memory—until now, when the note was here. Scott believed that Papa would have intended that. But with everything he discovered about his grandfather, he became more a stranger to Scott than ever. He was starting to respect the old man more and more, but he knew him less. That made him sad.

  Scott drove them around to the castle car park. They had to climb three floors before they found a parking space, and when Scott turned off the engine he slumped back in his seat, arms and shoulders tense, neck strained. “I don’t believe any of this is happening,” he said.

  “Don’t tell me I have to reach for my knife again.”

  “Was that humor?”

  “If you like.”

  “An immortal woman from before history began is telling me jokes.”

  “Like I said, Nina is lots of women. I adapt to the time I’m in. The woman from back then is almost as much a stranger to me as to you. I just share some of her memories.”

  “Do you remember everything?”

  Nina shrugged and smiled, and this time the smile was meant for him. “The Battle of Trafalgar is a bit hazy.”

  “Hazy.” Scott closed his eyes and thought of Helen being taken from him, the real sense that she was being dragged farther away than simple distance could allow. She had grown hazy as Lewis took her away.

  He started to cry. He could not help himself. This time yesterday morning he had only just read the letter from Papa, and things were still relatively normal. Now . . .

  “Where am I?” he said. “I feel so lost.”

  “Everyone is lost,” Nina said. “Believe me. I’ve been all over, and everyone is lost. There are those who buy, those who steal, and those who pray to ground themselves, but really we’re all just floating.”

  “Waiting for what?”

  “That’s something else I won’t answer for you,” she said. Something about her softened then, and Scott wondered how many men had fallen in love with those eyes. A lot, he thought. Many. It would be easy. “We’ll get your wife back,” she said. But she looked away and reached for the door handle. Scott caught sight of her face in the rearview mirror once again.

  For the first time since he saw her sitting behind the desk in his study, Nina looked truly old.

  “The pub won’t be open for a couple of hours yet.”

  “Doesn’t matter. I’ll get us inside.”

  “Something you learned in the Wide?”

  She reached into her pocket and pulled out a ring containing several wiry keys. “Prison.”

  They sat on the banked grass verge that skirted the walls of Cardiff Castle, watching the traffic go by and drinking scalding coffee from cardboard cups. Nina seemed to like it almost boiling, closing her eyes and sighing as she drank her coffee with a double shot of espresso.

  “What are we waiting for?”

  “The right time.” She sipped again. Eyes closed. Perhaps she was listening rather than looking.

  Scott watched people walking by. They all ignored him and Nina, enthralled in their own private worlds. They seemed to carry their personal space from their car and maintain it as they walked, rarely passing close enough to smell one another’s perfumes or breath, and certainly not close enough to have to catch one another’s eyes. I wonder if they can see us? he thought. Maybe she’s got us slightly removed, just a bit closer to the Wide.

  Across the road from them sat the Mason’s Vaults, an old pub sandwiched between a Gap clothing store on one side and a branch of Forbidden Planet on the other. It had black oak beams, leaded windows and a heavy oak door that could well have been hundreds of years old. Beside the door a glazed framed case held a food menu, and the glass had been smashed. Someone had kicked the glass against the wall, but a few shards remained on the pavement, catching the morning sun. Scott wondered how he could see them from all the way across the road.

  “Have you taken us somewhere?”

  “No. You drove.”

  “You know what I mean.”

  “Knowledge is power. You’re just seeing a little more.”

  “Not sure I’m happy with it.”

  Nina turned her face up to the sun. Scott took the opportunity to examine her profile once again, such a peaceful sight in so
much traffic noise and bustle. Someone across the road shouted, a teenager calling to another, and though it distracted Scott briefly, Nina seemed unconcerned. She must have seen and heard so much. If all this was true, she must have seen so much.

  “I’ve seen plenty,” she said.

  Scott blinked. “So you read my mind now, too?”

  Nina shook her head. “I read your silences.”

  “Remind me to keep talking.”

  “I’ve seen attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion.” She smiled, eyes still closed.

  Scott drank some more coffee, stretching for something, some memory. A car horn tooted, brakes squealed, someone else shouted. Shoes struck concrete. Engines grumbled with impatience. Across the road, glass shards glittered on the pavement before the Mason’s Vaults, and then he knew. “Blade Runner,” he said.

  “Very good.”

  “So you’re a big movie buff?”

  “I like the movies.” Nina’s eyes were still closed, and she took another long gulp of hot coffee.

  “You like coffee, too.”

  “Yes. And salmon dressed in frog spawn, dog’s liver fried in yak fat, and seeing the heat of a summer’s day scorch paint shades lighter.”

  “Weird.”

  “I also collect the hearts of dead things.”

  Scott said nothing, yet Nina responded to his silence.

  “Because they’re tough and strong. They outlast the rot of flesh. For a while, at least.”

  “Some odd things,” he said.

  “I’ve been around a long time. I’ve developed certain peccadilloes.”

  “Is teasing mere mortals one of them?”

  Nina looked at him, her face stern and so, so old once again. “I’m not teasing you, Scott,” she said. Then she looked across the road at the pub. “It’s time to go. Stay close. We’re so close.” She whispered the last three words, speaking to herself more than him.

  “If these were the pages Papa had, you could have taken them at any time.”

  “He hid them. And besides, it’s not only these pages we’re here for. It’s the clue Papa left with them that will lead us on.”

  “And that’s in his letter too?”

  Nina stood up and brushed grass cuttings from her rump. Her trousers were stained dark with her own blood, stiffened like cardboard, but even then she appeared the image of gracefulness. “No. I just knew him. The clue will be here, because Papa left it for you.”

  To begin with—before the blights came, and Scott fell, and things turned bad—events flowed.

  It seemed to Scott that Nina had been waiting for a convergence of chances. She had closed her eyes and listened to the surge of the world, and somehow she knew how long it would take her and Scott to stand, walk across the pavement, reach the other side, pick the lock on the pub’s front door, and go inside. There were no pauses, no wasted moments, and he tried hard to work out why wasted moments should mean so much to an immortal.

  Nina stood and walked out into the road. She did not stop at the curbside and look both ways. She did not alter her pace. And Scott followed. They walked through the traffic, gliding through gaps between vehicles. Nobody tooted their horns because they were not risking their lives. Nobody gave them the finger and leaned from their window, shouting about what stupid assholes they were, because Nina and Scott steered through the traffic as easily as a bird flying through a forest.

  By the time they reached the opposite pavement Scott was sweating. He felt a mixture of elation and dread.

  Nina did not pause. She stepped between a tall blond woman scratching her nose and a short black man talking into a mobile phone, knelt at the pub door, and withdrew the ring of keys from her pocket. Scott followed, so caught up in her confidence that he did not look around to see whether anyone was watching. If he had looked he knew what he would have seen: someone walking by, glancing at their watch just as they drew level; a driver trapped in the slow-moving traffic, changing a CD in his car stereo; someone else staring into the comic shop window next door to the pub, something about last night drawn in their wistful expression.

  “Are you hiding us?” he asked.

  “I just pick my moments well.” Nina was working on the lock with her skeleton keys, her hands moving delicately as she manipulated the tumblers inside.

  Scott stood behind her, staring at her back. Is she making them all ignore us, or can they just not see us? He looked around at last and saw exactly what he knew he would see: the world continued, ignoring this brash crime in their midst.

  “In we go.” Nina stood and shoved the door with her shoulder, glancing back and nodding Scott inside.

  He went in and she closed the door. “No alarm?”

  “Hope not.”

  “You mean you don’t know?”

  “I’m immortal, not God.”

  “You believe in God?” It came naturally, but Scott suddenly realized what a significant question that might be.

  Nina looked straight at him, blinking slowly. Her coffee-colored skin looked almost too smooth to touch. “Now that really is a question for another time,” she said.

  “Okay . . . another time. Right now we’re in a closed pub. You think Papa hid the stone tablets in here?”

  “That’s what it says in his note.”

  “So he chose a place like this to conceal part of the Chord of Souls.”

  “What better place? No one would think of looking here. And it had to be somewhere accessible for you to find.”

  Scott looked around. There were still a few dirty glasses and overflowing ashtrays on tables, and there was a spray of crumbs on the floor by the bar. Glass cases held signed rugby shirts. A menu was chalked onto a wall board, offering standard pub food. A quiz machine glowed green where it had been left on, and at the shady rear of the pub a large white screen hung awaiting the next match. A basic city-center pub, with nothing to differentiate it from a dozen others. What better place, indeed.

  “So where are they?”

  “Down.” Nina followed the L-shaped bar to the rear of the pub, turned the corner, and pushed through a door marked with male and female toilet signs. The light was poor back here, supplied by a rooflight covered with a decade’s worth of moss and city grime. Male toilet on their right, female on their left, but Nina chose a third door with a heavy padlock locking the hasp and staple latch. She went to work with her key ring again.

  “What were you in jail for?” Scott asked.

  “Armed robbery.” The padlock fell to the floor and Nina opened the door.

  “Great.” Scott was not sure whether or not he wanted her to elaborate. She said no more. He felt around on the wall for a light switch, and by the time he’d found it Nina was already at the bottom of the stairs. Scott went down and stood beside her.

  They were in the beer cellar. It stank of spilled beer, a sickly, stale caramel stench that seemed to coat the inside of his nostrils in seconds. A dozen barrels, stacked two high, lined the wall on one side. The opposite wall was piled with boxes and crates of bottles, some of them opened and half-empty, others full. A few bottles lay smashed and disregarded on the floor, the largest glass chunks kicked to one side. The light down here was not very good, but Scott could still see the handful of rodent traps scattered beneath barrels and between boxes, a couple of them bearing dead, rotting mice. The stink of their demise was evident below that of spilled drink: old rot, dried fur.

  “So where are they?” Scott asked.

  “Where do you think?” Nina turned to him, a strange look on her face.

  “Are you all right?”

  She nodded. “Fine. So where do you think Papa would have hidden them?”

  “You’re asking me? Don’t you know?”

  “It was you he was hiding them for. I’m just curious. Wondering whether—”

  “You told me you wanted to die.”

  Nina frowned. “I’d like the knowledge of how to end my curse, yes.”

  “But you’re still curious
. If you’re tired of life, I can’t imagine you being curious about anything.”

  “Don’t try to second-guess me, Scott. You’ll never understand. Now . . . where do you think they are?”

  “I have no idea.”

  “Sure?”

  “Nina—or whatever your real name is, or will be, or was—I have no fucking idea. Please stop playing games. I’m afraid. My wife has gone, I’m afraid, and I want to get her back as soon as I can.”

  Nina looked down at her feet. “Of course, I’m sorry. Truly.”

  “Deeper,” Scott said. “I think he’d have buried them deeper.”

  “I think so too.” Nina did not offend him by smiling, but he could see the satisfaction in her eyes as she walked to the end of the long, narrow room.

  At first glance the wall looked solid, but as Nina ran her hands across the painted surface her fingers seemed to draw the outline of something buried. Scott frowned, glanced slightly to the left and right, closed his eyes. When he opened them again a few seconds later the door was more than apparent.

  Seeing more, she had said.

  “We need to find something to open this,” Nina said.

  “How long will it take? Someone could be here anytime.”

  “Then let’s hurry.”

  Scott searched the few shelves on the wall beneath the stairs, feeling by touch because the light barely reached that far. He returned to Nina with a screwdriver and claw hammer, though half the hammer’s handle had snapped off. “All I could find.”

  “It’ll do.” Nina set to work. First she ran the screw-driver’s point around the outline in the wall, clearing powdery plaster from a sunken seal. She stepped back, breathing heavily, and it was then that Scott noticed she was panting.

  “What is it?”

  Nina shook her head, reaching out for the hammer.

  Scott stepped back. “What’s wrong?”

  “I can’t touch them,” she said. “Even being near them . . . it’s like I can taste the end of time.”

  “That’s why I’m here?”

  She nodded.

  “Well . . . thanks for being honest.”

  “Scott—”

  He moved beside Nina and pried the hammer’s claws beneath the edge of the seal. It was metal, rusted into the plaster, weak, and a few wrenches on the hammer saw a foot-long section of lining pop from the wall. It brought a spread of plaster with it, filling the air with dust and exposing a timber board behind the wall. He worked around the board, breaking the seal easily enough, scoring the surface of the wood, getting closer and closer to whatever lay behind. And it felt all wrong.