The Paradox

by Charlie Fletcher

  Shoes falling.

  The newly drowned buffeted by the last lashings of the living.

  Sara would scream if her own lungs too were not full of water.

  Her eyes begin to dim as unconsciousness reaches out and pulls her down.

  And then she sees her.

  The one woman not flailing for an unreachable surface.

  Lithe, strong, resolute–dark hair ribboning out behind her as she swims, head down–purposefully kicking for the cavern floor.

  Time jerks.

  The swimmer is almost there. A ribbon of bubbles flows back and upwards round her face, bobbling towards Sara.

  She is emptying her lungs so she doesn’t get pulled up by the natural buoyancy of any air left in her body.

  She is killing herself to achieve something.

  Her face turns upwards, looking past Sara, reaching for someone above her in the churn of death, and in that moment Sara recognises her and the truth of it slices at her like a knife cutting the last thread of consciousness.

  Her mouth tries to speak the name, to shriek at this last moment of awareness what is in fact the very first word she ever spoke

  one whole lifetime ago

  But she can’t because she is now drowning too.

  And as the field of her vision irises down into an ever narrowing cone, she sees that the black-haired woman has reached her target, the mirror through which all the drowned and the drowning have been lured, and is kicking at it, using the last spark of her own life to try and break it.

  To try and prevent anyone else ever dying in the same trap that has killed her.

  Anyone else–even her own daughter–who is of course Sara, the very one glinting all of this.

  And dying as she does so.

  The darkness wins.

  Sharp plunged back into the mirror. Into the cavern. His hand found Sara’s body before his eyes could even adjust, and he just wrenched her back out with him before he had time to fully enter the cavern.

  They tumbled out onto the mirrored floor of the maze, sprawling like fish on a slab.

  Sharp rolled out from under her.

  “Sara,” he croaked.

  Her eyes were wide open. Water dribbled from her slack mouth. Her chest was still and unmoving.

  “No,” he said. “No.”

  She was dead.

  Sharp rebelled.

  NO.

  He did not know if he roared this out loud or only in his head.

  NO.

  He did not care which.

  NO.

  “I do not accept this death,” he gasped. “It will not be so.”

  He looked down at her face.

  “No, Sara Falk,” he choked, water dripping from his face onto her unblinking eyes. “No death. Not yours. Not today. And never, ever before mine. I gave my word.”

  He moved fast, flipping her over onto her side and pressing her chest cavity. Some water spilled out of her mouth. He turned her the other way round. More water trickled out. Then he put her on her back and raised her chin and tried to force the rest out by filling her lungs with air from his own. He worked steadily and urgently, breathing, pressing her chest hard, breathing again and repeating.

  He had grown up next to the Thames. He had seen watermen try and revive the drowned on several occasions. Once it had even worked.

  He tried to remember what he was doing wrong.

  He clamped his mouth to hers and tried again and again to breathe life back into her.

  Her lips remained cold and waxy beneath his own.

  He was becoming light-headed from hyper-oxygenating. He allowed himself a moment to pause and look down at her face, again rebelling at the sight of her blue lips and the pale face that was now as unnaturally white as her hair.

  He shook her by the shoulders.

  “Sara!” he said. “Sara, please—”

  He wondered if he should hit her. One of the rivermen had slapped the victim he was trying to revive. He tried to remember if that had been the single successful attempt he had witnessed.

  He shook her again.

  “Sara,” he said, preparing to slap her.

  She jerked and vomited. Copiously, and comprehensively, all over him.

  Never before, and only once again in the future, was he so happy.

  He threw his head back and laughed.

  Her eyes fluttered and she found–unbelievably–that she had more fluid to heave up.

  “Sharp,” she gravelled. “Not… funny.”

  She gasped and choked some more.

  “No,” he said. “Wonderful.”

  She tried to raise herself. He wrapped his arms round her and helped her to sit.

  “Go easy—” he said.

  She shook her head.

  “No.”

  She pointed at the mirror next to the one she had just fallen out of.

  “We get out of these damned mirrors now.”

  “Sara,” he began.

  “Now, Sharp!” she said, voice like a slap. “We must get out now.”

  They stumbled through the mirror and into the catacomb passage which was still hip-deep in water which flowed strongly past them. Sharp clenched her to his side and looked around by the light of the candle gripped in his other hand.

  “She’s gone,” said Sara weakly.

  “Who?” said Sharp.

  “Mirror Wight. A nun,” she said. “Must have believed me.”

  “Believed you about what?” he said.

  “Said I’d cut her damn head off if she tricked me.” She coughed. “Not that she did. Maybe she thought I’d died.”

  “Dramatic,” he said.

  She retched out more water and shrugged.

  “Meant it when I said it. Which way do we go?”

  Sharp pointed left.

  “Water’s pooling and flowing to the right,” he said. “Downhill. So let’s go uphill.”

  “Good thinking,” she whispered, wiping her mouth with her sleeve and clinging to his arm. “Up and out and no hanging about.”

  They ploughed through the water. In about fifteen yards it began to get shallower. In twenty-five yards they were standing on dry stone, looking back at the flooding. She steadied herself against the side of the tunnel, then pulled her hand back as it shifted and clattered, and she saw, as if for the first time, what she was leaning on.

  “What is this place?” she shuddered.

  “Catacomb,” he said. “And the sooner we’re out of it, the happier I shall be.”

  FIFTH PART

  THE DEATH OF FIRE

  CHAPTER 39

  AMOS PASSES

  “Do you want to live?” said Badger Skull, looking down at Amos.

  Of course.

  His heart quickened for a moment.

  Can you break this tattoo?

  “No. The warrandice is an oath-lock. I told you as I scribed it in your skin. It cannot be broken. Or extended.”

  Amos slumped and turned away. He began to walk into the night.

  Then I am doomed.

  “Where are you going?” said the Ghost.

  I will do this by myself, by your leave.

  All he had left, as inescapable fate crushed in on him from both sides, was himself. If he was to die in the horrible way the Sluagh had described, if the body below his neck was to blacken like a rotten fruit and drop away from his head, he would at least spare himself the added indignity of being observed in that final extremity. As he walked into the blanketing darkness, he wondered if the last laugh might even be his, if he might cheat the warrandice’s fell penalty by ending his life before sunrise did it for him. He could at least be master of his own destiny. He questioned whether he could manage to drown himself, for he didn’t wish to use one of the tinker’s knives to open his veins: that would be letting the murderous tinker have the last (albeit postponed) laugh instead of him. Drowning hadn’t been too bad, as he remembered. Not as bad as the bite and tug of a knife and the unstoppable outrush of blood that wo
uld follow. His stomach rebelled at the thought again and he retched emptily without stopping walking. Maybe there was a cliff or a quarry nearby? A brief moment rushing through a void of air and then an immediate and bludgeoning subtraction of his consciousness from the tangled chorus of the world… But what if he only broke himself and didn’t fall hard enough to die? Then he would just lie there in shattered agony until the dawn…

  “Drowning would do it kindest,” said Badger Skull, contempt curling the edges of his words.

  Amos turned to find the mohawked chieftain had been following him and clearly watching his mind.

  Leave me alone.

  “Suicide is not the last laugh,” said the Sluagh. “It’s a scream of defeat.”

  If you were defeated as I now am, wouldn’t you scream?

  “No,” said Badger Skull. “If I was as you now think you are, I would at least have tried to take me with you, probably with that clasp knife you carry in your pocket, the one with the nasty, iron-steel blade.”

  And what would that have done to stop the inevitable?

  Amos was tired, more tired than he had ever imagined it was possible to be. Maybe just lying down and sleeping until it was over would be the best thing to do.

  “It wouldn’t have stopped the inevitable, but I think it would have made me feel better about myself,” said Badger Skull. “But that’s just me. Knowing someone else was going into the blackness with me. Who knows? Maybe we walk again on the other side. It might even have been company.”

  We don’t walk again on the other side.

  This was one of the things Amos had decided a long, long time ago, when sitting through the endless church services enforced at the parish orphanage. There was no heaven, and there was no god, because no god as kind as the fat priests pretended the one they invoked was would allow the misery and suffering Amos saw all around him. The Templebanes were in this respect much more honest than the churchmen, in that they admitted of no higher power than their own human agency, and no interest having a stronger pull on man’s activities than self-interest.

  “You know nothing, and you remember less,” said the Sluagh.

  Please leave me. Just leave me now. Please.

  Badger Skull spurred his horse and came level with him, leaning out, and slapped him off his feet.

  Amos was so shocked at the unexpectedness of the blow that he just sat in the middle of the road.

  What?

  “What did I tell you of the white tattoo,” said the Sluagh.

  It is a mark of… my subservience and compliance to your will.

  “And?”

  Amos rubbed his jaw. Bitterness was now beginning to bubble back to the surface.

  “It marks and guarantees the vow you made me take to kill Mountfellon and retrieve your flag.”

  “No. We did ask you to do that, but the warrandice itself was just to ensure you do as we ask, and to do so for a fixed term.”

  He pointed at Amos’s neck.

  “Which term is running out very fast.”

  I don’t understand.

  “You don’t understand because fear is clouding your brain. Which is what fear does. Put fear in your enemies’ brains and half the battle is won.”

  Amos scrabbled to his feet.

  Enough lessons. I don’t have time or need.

  “Again: the oath-lock is to ensure you do as we ask, and do so for a fixed term.”

  The geometric tangle of tattoos split in a thin smile.

  “The thing that’ll save you, Bloody Boy, is that we can ask you to do anything. We can tell you to kill Mountfellon for the woman. And then we can change our minds and tell you not to kill Mountfellon. Not yet. And we can tell you to go in there and retrieve our flag instead. Now.”

  I don’t believe you.

  “Why would I lie to you?”

  Amos grunted, the closest he ever got to an audible laugh.

  Because you want the flag. Because nothing is more important to you than breaking the Iron Law. Because you’d say anything to do that.

  The Sluagh looked at him.

  “I would,” he said. “I would lie from now until the end of time to do that. But I am not lying. Think back on the form of words we used and see if this is so.”

  Amos tried to clear his brain and remember if the precise phrasing had been as described.

  “And even if I am lying,” laughed the Sluagh, “which I am not, what have you got to lose?”

  Not very much, Amos had to admit as he looked around the moonlit fields and the ragged groups of cows being driven towards the top of the hillock behind the gibbet.

  Not very much.

  Which is why three minutes later he had walked past the Ghost who was still swearing at the Sluagh, demanding they put a new warrandice around his neck to ensure he remained her weapon against Mountfellon, and was looking into Whitlowe’s eyes.

  You will do as I say. I cannot talk. You will take me to the house. You will help me get into the room where Mountfellon hides his treasures behind ironbound doors. And then you will help me carry something back here. Do you understand?

  For a moment he thought he had failed to control the boy’s mind, and was kicking himself for his foolhardy conceit. But then Whitlowe’s head bobbed, and the shiny dewdrop had fallen off his nose and plashed to the coconut matting lining the tunnelled driveway at his feet.

  And a minute after that the gate was open and the two of them were trotting into the wide underground passageway, the arched ironstone ceiling lit by the ring of light from the Running Boy’s lantern.

  They covered the near half-mile in brisk time, and the boy preceded him up into the covered turning circle outside the sprawling manor house, flitting through the cast-iron pillars supporting the glass roof and–before Amos could stop him–knocking on the door at the top of the steps.

  The door swung open after a minute to reveal an irritated-looking footman who had clearly been roused from a deep and dishevelled slumber.

  “What d’you want?” he slurred down at Whitlowe. He focused on Amos. “And who’s the darkie…”

  Amos glared into the man’s eyes.

  Get out.

  The man’s lip blubbered in incomprehension, torn between the compulsion to obey and revolting at the naked violation of Amos’s intrusion into his mind.

  Get out. Run away. Now!

  The eyes stared at him, wavering. Amos decided he was halfway there. And deduced that he needed a more specific purpose before his subconscious control let itself be guided.

  Run to the wall around the estate. Run round it until sunrise. Then you can sleep.

  “Yes,” said the footman. “Yes, I will.”

  At once.

  “At once,” said the footman, and without another word lumbered away into the night. Whitlowe displayed no surprise or qualm at this; in fact, he displayed no sign of having actually noticed.

  Who else are we going to meet?

  “Old Biles,” said the boy. “’E sits up outside the master’s study of a night.”

  Alone?

  “Alone ’cept Bessie,” said the boy.

  Bessie is a woman?

  “Bessie is an ’orse-pistol,” said Whitlowe.

  Amos felt a chill pass through his guts. He decided he didn’t have time for that either.

  Get me close enough to see his eyes.

  Despite the unavoidable urgency of his task and his determination not to let anything delay him, Amos had time to marvel at the height of the cavernous hallway as they crossed its cathedral-like immensity. He looked up at the galleries running around the upper level, and at the strange shapes of the suspended bags covering the chandeliers. He noted the dustcovers draping every piece of furniture, turning the space into a maze of oddly shaped bundles. He listened to the passage of their feet across the marble floor and up the wide staircase. And then as they entered the long passageway that was lined with Mountfellon’s glazed collection of cabinets, his mouth, despite himself, hung open. He had
never seen such a variety of animals and fish and insects, laid out, dried, or boiled clear of their flesh. There were close-set ranks of every creature he could imagine, from butterflies and beetles to boned-out skeletons of gorillas and humans.

  He quailed a little as the lantern caught a skeleton whose head seemed, by a trick of the light, to turn and look at him out of hollow eye sockets, and then his attention was taken by the skin of the man–if it was a man–flensed and dried and cured and then pinned to the back wall of the cabinet behind the scaffolding of his bones, like a tiger-skin trophy. Except the tattoos decorating the body were much more intricate and deliberate than those on a tiger. And then he heard someone move.

  He looked round the corner to see a huge footman–Biles, no doubt–getting to his feet and raising a large horse-pistol in a sleepy manner.

  “Whitlowe,” he growled. “Whitlowe, you stupid boy, I nearly blew your noggin off.”

  Whitlowe just turned and looked blankly at Amos, who stepped forward.

  Mr Biles?

  Biles lowered the gun in confusion.

  “Er…” he said, then, as he realised his confusion was the specific and previously unencountered one of someone talking to him inside the confines of his own head, his brow crinkled. “Oi…”

  “Er” and “oi” were all he was able to contribute to the evening’s conversation because Amos, ever more conscious of the itching round his neck, persuaded him to gently hand over the horse-pistol and then open, by the use of three large keys, the room beyond.

  It should have been harder. Later, when the bad thing happened, Amos returned to this moment. If it had been harder, perhaps he would have paid more attention. Perhaps he would have found a deeper well of caution to pause and drink from. Perhaps he would have been able to avoid that terrible consequence after all.

  As it was, the box with the flag was easily found, without any need to avail themselves of any more light than that provided by Whitlowe’s lantern. A slender ironbound box, eight feet long by a foot on each side, was unusual enough to stand out. The room Mountfellon used as a study had originally been a ballroom, and a generously proportioned one at that. The windows were shuttered and the walls, floor and ceiling were covered by an immense gridwork of iron straps criss-crossing each other at yard-long intervals, making an internal cage that Mountfellon relied on to protect this inner sanctum from the depredations of the uncanny and the supranatural. He had a dark oak banqueting table at the centre of the room that, from the stacks of paper covering it, he clearly used as a writing desk. One end of the room was covered in a huge floor-to-ceiling bookcase, accessible via a ladder, and on the floor beside it they found the flag box.