The Everlasting

by Tim Lebbon

  He remembered a holiday they’d had together to Cornwall a year before, and he fell asleep dreaming of walking across the causeway to St. Michael’s Mount.

  A hand on his shoulder stirred him from his dreams. He was ravenous, and he wondered what food Nina had brought back.

  Old Man sat beside him on the bed. “Remember your promise,” he said. “The book. To me.”

  “I promise,” Scott said.

  “I know so much,” Old Man said. “So much information. So much knowledge. So many secrets. But there’s so much more to know. Shame, if Chord of Souls left us forever.”

  “What else is in the book?” Scott asked. “Apart from the immortality part. What else?”

  “What did Nina tell you?”

  “She said ‘stuff.’ ”

  Old Man nodded and turned away. “Stuff. Good.” He went to his desk, sat down, and picked up his pen, and whatever Scott said to him—however much he pleaded for information or tried to enter into conversation—Old Man remained silent until Nina returned to the cave.

  Scott’s final few minutes in the cave seemed even stranger than everything that had gone before. He and the two immortals sat there and ate McDonald’s. Old Man seemed especially appreciative of the meal, smacking his lips and nodding his head with each mouthful. “Self-destruction can be fun,” he said as he tucked into his second Big Mac.

  Scott walked the perimeter of the room a few times to show Nina that he was strong enough to leave. In truth he felt better than he had for years, and after their brief pause he was keener than ever to get back on the trail. He had the skull key ring in his pocket and Helen in his soul.

  As they prepared to leave, Old Man crawled across to the bed and pulled something out from underneath. It was an LCD television set. He arranged it on his desk, plugged it into a socket fixed loosely to the wall, and sat back in his chair.

  “But you’re blind,” Scott said.

  “Am I?” Old Man looked at him with those milky eyes, and Scott began to doubt.

  As they left, Old Man was illuminated by a rapid-fire splash of color and light. The strains of Kerrang! TV accompanied them back out through the caves, and by the time they reached the outside, Scott had already begun to doubt that any of the past day had happened.

  He felt better, yes. His arm and chest were almost back to their normal color, he was rested, and he knew a little more about what they were doing. But the small opening in the hillside below Edinburgh Castle seemed to be an unlikely home for an immortal.

  “That’s why he lives there,” Nina said when he stated his doubts. “He’s in the heart of things, but so far away.”

  “You collect dead hearts.”

  “This one can’t die.”

  Scott went to ask more questions about Old Man—electricity, oil, food?—but he thought better of it. He liked the mystery. In that way if no other, he and Papa were very much alike.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  in memory of fleeting friendships

  “I have some questions,” Scott said. “I’m confused.”

  “What questions?”

  They were sitting in a café just off Princes Street. It was midafternoon, and the city was buzzing. People sat close around them, talking into mobile phones or having animated discussions with companions, eating, drinking hot coffee or cold juice, and catching snippets of their conversations made Scott want to know more.

  He had never felt so distanced from civilization. He wondered whether more knowledge would drive him even farther away.

  “Well, aside from about six million questions about Old Man, there are these: Why are we looking for the book instead of for Helen? Who is behind Lewis? What was all that talk of war? Why are you so keen on destroying the book, while Old Man wants it handed back to him?” He took a sip of coffee and a bite of doughnut.

  “That’s it?”

  “For starters.”

  “If we look for Helen we won’t find her. If we find the book, Lewis will bring her to us.”

  “What makes you so sure?”

  “He wants the book more than anything else. He wants an earthbound immortality. Papa stole that from him, and he sees it as his right.”

  “Okay. So who’s behind him?”

  “Another immortal. Not sure which one.”

  “And they want the book because of this other ‘stuff’ it has in it?”

  “Yes. Same reason Old Man wants it. Same reason neither of them can have it.”

  “These were the people you wrote the book with all those years ago.”

  “Yes.”

  “Can’t any of you remember what’s in it?”

  “The basics, yes. Not the execution. Not the practice. At the time when we wrote it all down, we were only . . .”

  “Human.”

  Nina nodded. She took a drink of strong black coffee. It was her third cup.

  Scott shook his head, looking down into his own brew. “This is all madness. All I want is my wife. I don’t want to get mixed up in—”

  “It’s inevitable. You know where the book is, and you’re the only person. You get that, Scott? Now that Papa is dead and beyond reach, you’re the only one who knows its location. That makes you special. That makes you R2-D2 in Star Wars. You have the information.”

  “So why not torture it out of me, like Old Man said?”

  “He was joking. But there are others. . . .” She drifted off, looking down into her cup.

  “Oh, great.”

  They drank their coffee in silence, and it was a couple of minutes before Nina spoke again. “I want the Chord of Souls destroyed because it should never have been written down in the first place. And Old Man wants it just because he’s an information junkie.”

  “What were those things coming out of the holes in his walls?”

  “Information.”

  Scott nodded as though he understood. Nina was driving him mad. She spoke to him, but said nothing.

  “So what are we waiting for?” he said. “Nothing like forging ahead blindly into something you don’t understand that could lead to war.”

  “The war comment—”

  Scott held up his hand. “Don’t. Later, maybe. Not now. Unlike that weird Old Man under the hill, I can suffer information overload.”

  He looked at the ghost that had been sitting in one of the window seats ever since they arrived. She stared from the window and drummed her fingers on the table, making a gentle tapping sound. A couple of people looked around now and then, or checked their mobile phones, or touched the radiator on the wall beside them to stop the water hammer. But none of them saw her. For them, she may as well never have existed at all.

  They hired a car. Scott had half expected Nina to prepare them for another trip across the boundaries of the Wide, but she said that she could do that only if she knew exactly where they were going. Scott remained silent, offering up no information. She smiled and nodded, and he was glad. He had no real wish to visit that place again.

  Scott drove them out of Edinburgh on the A70 and headed south. The sun was dipping toward the west, painting the sky a palette of oranges and yellows. His perception of day and night was totally confused. He felt jet-lagged. When all this was over and he had Helen back . . .

  Tears threatened but he fought them off. Now was not the time. Crying felt like giving in.

  “There’s a trust issue here,” Nina said at last. She’d been totally silent for over half an hour, sitting back in her seat and watching the world go by.

  “You sound like Oprah.”

  “So you’re admitting that you do watch TV sometimes, then?”

  “Sometimes,” Scott said. “Usually fantasy. Though none of it as far-out as this.”

  “You should tell me what the skull key ring means.”

  “You say you knew Papa. Don’t you know?”

  “No. I didn’t know him that well.”

  “Tell me about him. What you knew, and how. All I know of him is what he and I had, really. I’d l
ike to hear someone else’s stories.”

  “If I tell you, will you tell me what the skull means?”

  “Why not just wait until we get there?”

  She was silent for a while, tapping her fingers on the dashboard. Trucks stormed by, and it started to rain. “I’m afraid something may happen to you,” she said at last.

  Right, thought Scott. I buy the farm and the knowledge goes with me.

  “Lewis?”

  “Yes. And whoever’s aiding him.”

  “Why would they kill me? Do that and they’d never . . .” Scott trailed off. Have I learned nothing?

  “You see?” she said.

  “Yes. No need to explain. They kill me, stop me from setting off into the Wide. Interrogate me over there. But what can they do—”

  “The dead can be hurt as well, if you know how.”

  “Fucking marvelous.”

  “So you see why I not only want to keep you alive, but also think you should share what you know with me.”

  “I don’t trust you.”

  “Good. That’s healthy. But believe me when I say, Scott, that we have to be here for each other in this. We have to.”

  Scott watched water pushed up the windshield by the air forced over the car. The faster he went, the quicker the water would be pushed. He was being driven in the same way: a splash of water in a rainstorm, forced onward by powers he could not possibly imagine or hope to understand. The only thing that offered him an advantage was the skull key ring and what it represented.

  “Tell me a story from your past,” he said.

  “Why?”

  “Because I want to hear.” He flicked the headlights on and isolated their car more than ever. Islands in the storm, he thought.

  “There are so many,” she said.

  “The first one that comes to your mind,” Scott said. “Keep me awake. I’m sleepy. You wouldn’t want me to crash and die now, would you?”

  “I’ve lost friends before,” Nina said; then she fell silent for a couple of minutes as though regretting saying it. “Okay,” she continued. “Okay. There was Jack. He lived in Deadwood, and he was famous for shooting Wild Bill Hickok.”

  “You’re kidding me.”

  “You want me to tell a story? Shut up and listen.”

  Scott sighed and settled back into his seat.

  “Not much of a story actually,” Nina said. “Just about Jack. Wayward boy. He liked to brag about crimes he’d never committed, talk himself up. Carried a gun, like a lot of men did in those days. He traveled from town to town, robbing stores, rustling cattle, and he had this uncanny ability to dodge in and out of trouble like a slippery fish.

  “I met him a year before Deadwood. He’d been prospecting for gold, but he’d grown bored quickly, and he’d taken to robbing the prospectors. I was one of them, but he’d left me alone. I was a woman and . . . well, I could look after myself. I’d already proved that several times.” She touched the mass of scar tissue on her neck, and Scott thought, How bad must that have been to still be visible now?

  “I willed it to stay visible,” Nina said. “In case you’re wondering.”

  Scott said nothing.

  “So, one day there was a massive storm in the valley we’d been working. Landslides, new streams roaring down from the hillsides, and the river burst its banks and flooded hundreds of acres. Jack chose that night to rob the wrong man, who came after him. Jack burst into my tent. We stared at each other for a while—he was dripping with water and sweat, panting with fear—and then I ushered him under my bed-clothes. Told him to shut up if he wanted to live.

  “Bastard Bob—the guy he’d robbed—came into my tent, waving his gun and raging about how he’d seen the thieving little shit come this way, and he’d have his pound of flesh before the day was over. I just looked at him, told him no one had entered my tent, and asked if he was really ready to search a lady’s things.”

  “So did he?”

  “No. I stared him down, and he left.”

  “Yes,” Scott said. “I can imagine that working.”

  “Jack stayed with me for four nights. Such a young lad, innocent, and doomed from the moment he was born. After that he left and I never saw him again. He was one of the few friends I’ve ever made.”

  “You knew him for four days,” Scott said, aghast. “He was a criminal and you saved him, and he was a friend?”

  “Four days is a lifetime in the company of a friend, Scott.”

  “That doesn’t make any sense.”

  Nina was silent for a few seconds, her breath hidden in the swish of the windshield wipers. “It does to me,” she said.

  “So your friend went on to kill Hickok and—”

  “Jack never killed anyone.”

  “Then who?”

  Nina was silent for so long that Scott thought she had fallen asleep. He glanced across at her, unable to see her eyes, and the third time he looked she had turned back to him. “Something else,” she said. “Jack just got the blame. So do you trust me now? You’re Jack, Scott, and I’ve taken you in from the storm.”

  “No,” he said. “I don’t. And we’re not friends, Nina.” He expected her to start raging, and he had no idea what an immortal could really do when provoked.

  “Fair enough,” she said. “But you will trust me. You’ll see that my cause in this is not totally selfish. I promise.”

  “I hope so,” he said, and he really did. He liked Nina. She was so different from him that he could barely comprehend her, but there was still a humanity about her—something naive and primal, something almost innocent—that drew him. Old Man had lost his way ages ago, taking to a hole in the ground to survive. Nina was still out here. For Scott, that said a lot.

  After an hour of contemplative silence, Scott said, “I asked you to tell me a story, and now you’ve confused me more than ever.”

  “Sorry,” Nina said.

  “That’s okay.” He drove on, wondering whether she was sorry at all.

  They pulled off the motorway outside Preston and found a pub that had rooms to let. They’d come almost two hundred miles, and Scott was exhausted. Part of him wanted to carry on through the night, reach the place of the screaming skulls, and discover whether the rest of the book was there or not. After that, perhaps, would come Helen. But another part of him urged caution. Somehow it felt right, to stop, rest, and take stock. Fatigue made the decision easier.

  After checking into their adjoining rooms, they sat in the bar for a while, watching people come and go. The pub claimed to be one of the most haunted in Britain, but Scott had seen no sign of any ghosts. He was glad. He’d entered his room warily, knowing that he’d never be able to sleep where a wraith played moments from the past. He was briefly tempted to take the manager to task over the brash statement, but that seemed so crass. And besides, he had no way of backing his knowledge of the truth.

  “There’s never any real understanding, is there?” he said.

  Nina was sipping at yet another cup of black coffee. “What do you mean?”

  “People. These people. They don’t understand very much. Their knowledge is mostly constrained.”

  “You feel you know more than them already. I suppose you do.”

  “I do. The Wide, the Chord of Souls. You.”

  Nina brushed her long hair back behind her ear, a surprisingly vulnerable gesture. “After just a couple of days, too. Imagine how much I understand after much, much longer.”

  “You haven’t told me when you were born.”

  “You’d never believe me.”

  “I believe that you’re immortal.”

  “Do you?”

  Scott nodded. He stared into her eyes. Yes, I believe.

  “But deep down, you can’t believe it. It’s been only two days, Scott. You’ve seen and heard a lot, but your conditioning—”

  “I was conditioned by Papa.”

  Nina looked away and smiled. “Of course,” she said. “I sometimes forget.” Scott was
not sure whether there was a mocking tone there or not. She had a way of making him feel so inferior, an insect in the protection of a hawk.

  “What about the others?” he asked. “Tell me about them. Are they all like you? Or are most of them mad, like Old Man?”

  “Madness is relative,” she said. “You have to have something to compare it to. We’re unique.”

  “You’re sure you’re the only ones? Twelve immortals, and you’re sure you’re unique? Nature can’t like that.”

  “I’m sure it doesn’t. And yes, I’m sure. We’ve had a long time to look for others.”

  “Who told you what to write in that book?”

  “I’ve already said, you can never know. No one can. It would change everything. A change that rapid and extreme would mean the end.”

  “God?”

  Her expression gave him nothing.

  “If it was God, and the book is proof of His existence . . . I don’t know, maybe proof would be a good thing. If everyone knew He was there, maybe the world would be a better place.”

  Nina took another drink of coffee.

  “Well . . .” Scott drained his drink and stood to get another. He looked around the pub. A family sat in one corner, parents trying to keep their kids occupied while their dinner was prepared. A few couples were sitting here and there, a scattering of lonely men drinking lonesome pints, and a large family group sat around the other side of the bar, playing some sort of quiz and enjoying one another’s company. It was an attractive place, but laced with the trappings of chaindom: stock menus, familiar wood and chrome fittings, and pointless beams newly cut to look old. “I’ll get us another drink,” he said. “And then I’d like to hear about the others. If that’s okay with you.” He walked across to the bar without waiting for Nina’s reply.

  I want to hear, because one of them has Helen.

  “What can I get you?” The barman glanced across at Nina, then back at Scott.

  “Abbott, and a black coffee, please.”

  And I think she already knows which one it might be.

  “Here on holiday?”

  “No.”

  “Right.” The barman looked at Nina again as he poured the pint, eyes twitching up and down as he sized her up.