The Narrows

by James Brogden

  ‘That doesn’t give you the right to just reach into me and… and adjust me!’

  ‘You’re right. It doesn’t. And if both of us get out of this alive, I’ll buy you a big bunch of flowers and a puppy to show you how sorry I am. In the meantime, though? Try saving your hangups and your precious self-righteous anger for a time when the whole of creation isn’t at stake, okay?’ He turned away from her and remounted. To the rest of them he ordered: ‘We do not rest and we do not stop until we reach that gate. Let’s go.’

  ***

  The first site Rosey chose was the only one labelled with more than those funny astrological-looking symbols; Dodd’s name had been scribbled underneath in rounded, girlish handwriting which he assumed was Bex’s. He guessed this meant that it was the last place she had seen her friend, and it seemed as good a place to start as any.

  It turned out to be a construction site – or at least, one small, closed-off subdivision of the sprawling development around the new Queen Elizabeth Hospital complex in Harborne. A large wedge of semi-wooded brownfield land lying between the Worcester-Birmingham canal and Harborne Park Road had turned into acres of reinforced concrete, gravel dumps, portacabin villages and the I-beam skeletons of new buildings scratching at the sky. The core of the new hospital was complete, but Rosey knew that its own little suburbia of ancillary buildings would still take years to finish, if they ever were. The global recession had caused many small subcontractors to go to the wall, and despite the fact that even today, on Saturday, the main site was busy with cranes and concrete mixers, there were still areas like the one in front of him now which were padlocked and abandoned. Derelict before it was even finished, like a stillbirth.

  If there were a ‘gate’ here, he failed to see it. If it was meant to be anything like the way Bex had disappeared then he couldn’t understand how; there were no standing stones or empty gaps where they should have been. There weren’t even any trees.

  He did a circuit of the chainlink fence. All he could see was roughly poured concrete with the rusting ends of reinforcing struts sticking up out of it, and sheets of torn plastic flapping in the spaces between girders. It looked like it had been abandoned in a hurry and not that long ago: there were a few hardhats and tools lying around which no chippie would ever ordinarily leave behind, along with sodden clumps of paperwork. Other than that, nothing.

  Then he saw the figure.

  It was pale and emaciated, sitting cross-legged, with its back propped against an upright, either stoned or dead or simply just staring into space – and aside from being wrapped in shreds of plastic, it seemed to be entirely naked. Despite this, he couldn’t tell if it was male or female, just that they were plainly starving to death and undoubtedly suffering from exposure.

  ‘Hey!’ he called. ‘Are you okay there?’

  The figure lifted its head slightly in his direction, but otherwise gave no sign of having heard him.

  Old instinct and new caution warred within him. Everything that was humane in his temperament told him to get over that fence, get some clothes around that poor devil and call an ambulance – but he’d seen the world he thought he knew split open too many times in the last few days to trust anything. He settled for a compromise.

  ‘I’m going to call for an ambulance, alright?’ he called. He took out his mobile and dialled 999. If it were nothing more than a junky vagrant, he’d have done the right thing. If it were something more… well at least he hadn’t been stupid enough to try to deal with it on his own.

  The figure climbed painfully to its feet and began to stagger towards him. It clasped shreds of plastic tightly about itself, but Rosey could now see plainly that it was a young man. Or what was left of one. It paused and was seized with a spasm of tubercular coughing, which sounded like stones being stirred in a bucket, and said hoarsely: ‘You called an ambulance.’

  ‘You’ll be alright, mate. Is it Dodd? They’ll be here any second.’

  The scarecrow which had once been Rodney Stokes made it as far as the chainlink fence and curled its fingers around the wire for support. This close, fresh horrors revealed themselves: the man appeared to have been tortured. Black burn-blisters punctuated his skin like a sadist’s dot-to-dot puzzle, and there were at least two very deep stab wounds down the middle of his torso. That he was alive at all was a miracle. That he could walk…

  ‘No point.’ He coughed again, rattling and gluey.

  ‘What do you mean, no…’

  The spittle was black, and where it hit the wire, it fizzed like acid.

  ‘I mean they won’t be in time to save you,’ said the Gatekeeper, and his flesh unravelled in dark streamers like some deep sea creature opening to feed.

  3 Urdrog

  The urdrog were the oldest of all terrors. They came out of the frozen darkness at the beginning of time, as humanity fled before the ice and the circles of the world shrank about them with death on every side: by claw, by cold, and most of all by their own hand. Whether their own fears had created the urdrog or simply called them, none could say, certainly not the creatures themselves. They cared nothing for such questions, being as they were the purest embodiment of naked, predatory hunger. When the first cities rose and humanity began to lift itself out of superstition, riding the widening circles of the world out into the light of civilisation, the urdrog remained close to the centre of all things, in the uttermost depths of eternal winter. In the shadows of shadows.

  Which is not to say that Man forgot them. They lurked in the lightless abysses of dreams and were worshipped with blood and fire as demons of one form or another by every race throughout the ages. Every so often, an unfortunate traveller’s feet would lose him along forgotten roads worn down through the skins of the world; if he survived the lesser creatures like the skavags and their kin, he would certainly not escape the oldest of all terrors. The most he might hope for would be that the sight would drive him insane before he was killed.

  Dodd’s body was puppeted by a veined webwork of black sha, the death energy which was all that remained of his soul once Barber had plundered the rest of it to open a way for the thing which now emerged from inside him. Rosey watched it unfold from the boy, rooted immobile with shock.

  He said it was like going fishing.

  It was a bit like a wolf, but only in the sense that a Tyrannosaurus Rex is a bit like a budgerigar. He had an impression of too many eyes and far too many teeth, but these were the only features he could make out with any certainty, because the rest of it seemed blurred, as if his brain refused to acknowledge what his eyes were seeing, and when it howled the sound seemed to come from the middle of his own head.

  Its claws shredded the chainlink like cobwebs.

  It was funny really, thought Rosey. Here he’d been all these years trying to set the world to rights, and it had all been for nothing, because nothing could ever be right in a world with such things. He should have known that the moment he set foot inside the house on Tyler Road. He began to laugh as it drew itself up before him. Were those tails or tentacles? He was seized by a sudden appreciation of the absurdity of it all: his job, his marriage (such as it had been), his own kids, Andy, Bex… trying to make sense of any of it. The map – oh yes, especially the map! He laughed harder, tearing great chunks out of the map and cramming them into his mouth at the same time as tears rolled down his cheeks.

  By the end, he was laughing so hard that he barely noticed when the urdrog began to eat him.

  ***

  Bex was snapped out of her fugue state by the sound of Andy’s screaming.

  He fell from the back of Edris’ horse, already convulsing before he hit the ground, and writhed amidst the twisted black stalks of heather, his fingers clawing at the sodden earth. His eyes were upturned, unseeing, and the sounds coming from his throat were of appalling, unremitting agony.

  Order
fell apart. The horses, spooked, reared and skittered sideways. Edris was able to bring Compa to hand with relative ease, but Bruna had to struggle to stop hers bolting off across the moor. Ted had been further ahead, but his mare was snorting and tossing her head, fighting his attempt to ride back.

  Bex dismounted awkwardly, landing on her knees in the waterlogged moss, scrambling to reach Andy. Everybody seemed to be shouting at the same time. He was thrashing more wildly now, heels drumming up great gouts of black water, and scratching his arms and face badly on the vegetation. And screaming, screaming, screaming.

  ‘What’s wrong?’ yelled Ted, badly scared. ‘What’s he doing?’

  ‘Some evil possesses him,’ Edris warned and unsheathed his sword.

  ‘No!’ Bex threw herself on the twisting figure, clutching the back of his head with both hands and burying his face in her shoulder as she tried to calm him, murmuring meaningless words and just holding him as the bucking subsided and his muffled screams became moans, and then whimpers, and finally silence, and they lay there like dying lovers.

  ***

  ‘It was Penrose.’ Andy’s voice was hoarse, and his face was haggard. ‘I felt him die.’

  They’d moved to a slightly higher, less boggy rise of land, and Bruna was applying some kind of salve to his cuts.

  Bex couldn’t believe it. Penrose? ‘How?’

  Andy just shook his head, closing his eyes. ‘Something terrible,’ he whispered. ‘Ancient, and – god – so cold. I don’t know where or what happened. I suppose he must have been, I don’t know…’

  ‘Snooping.’

  ‘Trying to help.’

  ‘Same thing.’

  ‘Of course Barber would have left the gates guarded, but what was that thing? Weren’t skavags enough?’ He laughed shortly. ‘No, of course not. It’s never enough. Why rule one world when you can rule them all? Why kill a village when you can kill an entire city? Jesus.’

  ‘But I thought you knew what his plans are now?’

  ‘I got a flash of the big picture, not the fine details. I was sort of being killed at the time; I wasn’t concentrating too hard.’

  Edris showed little sympathy. ‘We shall all die if we do not find shelter before nightfall. If you are fit to ride, then we must do so at once.’

  Bex helped him to his feet. Just before he remounted behind the Dobunni warrior, he turned back to her and said ‘It ate him, Bex, while he was still alive. But it ate his mind first.’

  ***

  Through veils of driving sleet, they saw the stone circle emerge. It was not the majestic Stonehenge-like edifice which Bex and Ted had expected. The stones were blunt nubs of weathered limestone, carved and pitted by the elements, and some were almost completely buried under thick tussocks of grass. They reminded her of the Kiftsgate stone. The ruins of several roundhouses stood a little way off, once inhabited by those who had looked after the gate; but they were not so long abandoned that they couldn’t still provide shelter for travellers.

  Ted and Bruna struggled to get a fire going in the lee of a wattle-and-daub wall, while the others inspected the stone circle cautiously from the outside.

  ‘So there’s a Narrow here?’ Bex asked.

  ‘A lacuna,’ replied Andy, ‘but yes.’

  ‘Weird. It seems so open, I’m used to them being all tucked away and hidden.’

  ‘Remember, the Narrows are just distorted fragments of one ley. This, on the other hand…’ Andy was becoming restive and excitable again, his eyes darting everywhere as if either trying to take in everything at once or seeing things beyond her perception. ‘…this is a bruise in the flesh of the world. Inside, there the skins are so close they virtually overlap – these stones probably exist in dozens of worlds, including our own. Have you ever been to the Rollright Stones?’

  She shook her head, shivering.

  ‘This is them. An identical fixed point in parallel realities. Completely fantastic, isn’t it?’

  ‘But they’re miles away from Birmingham! We’ll never get back in time for the solstice!’

  ‘Don’t worry about it; we have all the time we need. This world is higher up than ours, not like Holly End; we could spend days here if we needed to and still get there in time. Like I said before, I can’t do this on my own. I need you with me, and this is the nearest place thin enough to bring all of us through. Plus, I can make these things go wherever I want; you know that.’

  ‘Bottom line: will it get us home?’

  ‘Yes,’ he said in tones of absolute certainty.

  ‘Right then,’ she nodded and went off to help the others.

  All that remained of the roundhouses were circular stone walls about four feet high, faced on the inside with crumbling wattle and daub, and many jumbled rafters which had once supported the high, conical roofs. They were able to construct a flat-roofed semi-circular shelter which they waterproofed as best they could with some spare bedrolls – too low to stand up in, but with enough room for a fire. Despite his earlier reassurances, Andy chafed at the delay, but Edris was firm on the matter of seeing Bruna properly protected against the elements.

  ‘It will soon be dark,’ he said. ‘Impossible to make the return journey, and death without shelter. Four of us will make short work of it, and then we may leave.’

  Ted’s eyes lit with excitement. ‘You mean you’re coming with us?’

  ‘Indeed I am.’

  ‘Topping!’

  ‘Sorry, what do you mean ‘us’?’ Andy’s scepticism was plain. ‘There is no us. This is way too dangerous for kids. You’re staying here with Bruna. We’ll come back for you if everything goes okay and the world doesn’t, you know, end.’ He turned to Edris, and in more conciliatory tones said ‘And I’m honoured, but that was never part of the arrangement. You were just supposed to escort us here, and you’ve done that. There’s no need for you to come any further with us. Please, go back to your people.’

  Edris’ face was impassive in the gathering gloom. He had made little concession to the weather, and if he felt the cold didn’t show it, despite the ice that had formed in his hair and moustache. Gold gleamed at his throat, and an unswerving resolve shone in his eye. Andy had a frightening sense of what it would be like to come up against this man in battle. ‘As I understand it,’ the Dobunni said, ‘you go to fight a terrible evil which threatens not just your world but many others, my own included. To walk away from such a venture would be dishonourable in itself. To allow children and women to fight in my place…’ he shook his head. ‘It could not be borne.’

  ‘It is true,’ Bruna added. ‘Edris is a warrior. This fate was woven for him.’

  ‘But won’t you get in trouble for not going back?’ asked Ted.

  ‘If I return, it will be with a glorious victory which honours my clan and my people.’

  ‘And if we fail,’ said Andy, ‘there’ll be nobody left alive to take him off their Christmas card list, anyway. Fair enough. You’re in. Far be it from me to stand between a man with a big sword and his destiny. But you, Ted, are still staying here, and that’s an order.’

  ‘I’ll follow you. You can’t stop me.’

  ‘Ted, please, listen. I’m responsible for you. I can’t have that on my conscience. No offence, but I can’t be watching out for you. Edris, please make him see sense.’

  Edris looked across the flames of their small fire and saw Ted’s eyes pleading silently with him. The boy had made a long journey uncomplaining, and if the stories about him were true, then he was both resourceful and brave. Edris himself had been prenticed to Iaran at much the same age. ‘If there is to be fighting,’ he said at length, ‘then I will need a spear boy.’

  ‘Yes! Ow!’ Ted had leapt up in joy and cracked his head on a rafter.

  ‘A conscious spear boy,’ the big warrior
added drily.

  Andy admitted defeat. ‘Fine then. Can we just go?’

  Bruna watched them approach the stone circle. The sleety rain had diminished to a fine, drizzling mist which rendered them all but invisible after a few yards. She was gripped with the utter conviction that she would never see any of them again, and acting on an impulse which was most unlike her, she ran forward to the girl Bex – that strange, angry, funny creature – unfastening her wieve-maiden’s brooch from her tunic.

  ‘Here,’ she said, pressing it into Bex’s hand. ‘Now wherever you go people will know that you have a clan. They will accord you respect.’

  Bex laughed, grateful, after all, of Andy’s ‘adjustment’, and that she could now understand her new friend. ‘Somehow I doubt that. But thank you. Here…’ she rummaged through her rucksack, and found a small cardboard packet. ‘I know you’re all into sewing and stuff.’

  Bruna tried to refuse it, saying, ‘This is a gift, not trade.’

  ‘Honey, in my world everything’s up for trade, know what I mean?’

  Bruna relented. ‘Then I will use it to make something beautiful, to honour you and your world.’ Then it was Bruna’s turn to be surprised as Bex crushed her in a sudden fierce hug.

  ‘You get yourself a big warrior man and have lots of scary babies, okay?’

  As they disappeared into the middle of the stone circle, Andy fell in beside Bex and said ‘Did you just give her a motel sewing kit as a goodbye present?’

  Bex sniffed at him. ‘Might have done.’

  ‘Cheapskate.’

  ‘Just shut up and get us home, Dimension Boy.’

  ***

  The Rollright Stones were little more than bleared shadows in the greater gloom. Andy led them on a curving route, skirting the centre of the circle, and hesitated for a moment, feeling for which gap would lead them home most quickly.