by Mark Cassell
About to flip to the next page, I realised my error. The man wasn’t climbing out of the shadows, but into them. Again his expression grabbed me.
I browsed each of the 623 pages, trying to understand passages and failing every time. I closed the book and ran my fingertips along the spine and across the strange symbol. Those two triangles facing one another, one hollow, the other solid, with their apexes separated by a curved X, represented something. Throughout the book, it was referenced several times. What the hell did it mean?
I reached for another book, this one about metaphysics by a man named Robert Fludd. Published in 1617, its title was incredibly longwinded, The Metaphysical, Physical, and the Technical History of the Two Worlds, namely the Greater and the Lesser. Another scrap of perforated notebook paper marked a page depicting a simple black square, and nothing else apart from the words ‘et sic in infinitum’ written on all four sides. In pencil on the bookmark, and what I assumed was the translation, were the barely legible words: and like this to infinity.
The book’s title was in English, yet German and Latin dominated its pages. Those five scribbled words troubled me as much as the image in the aged tome at my feet, the one with the man climbing into the shadows, his melted face not a mask of pain, but of enlightenment?
And like this to infinity…
CHAPTER 10
Thursday
The smell of coffee shot up my nostrils and a gloved hand fell away from my shoulder. Victor placed a mug on the table as I pushed myself up. The sofa groaned with me. I didn’t know where I was. Books everywhere…then I remembered: Victor’s flat. Necromeleons. Corpses. The Shadow Fabric. And Stanley was killed.
“Morning.” Victor pointed at Fludd’s book in my lap. “Bedtime reading?”
“Not quite.” My tongue stuck to my teeth. I rubbed my eyes.
“No nightmares?” Victor asked and leaned back against the sofa, linking fingers around his mug. He looked much better than he did yesterday.
“Did you have any?”
“In light of what’s happened?”
“Yeah.” I caught the book before it fell. My elbow popped as I placed it on the table.
“You need answers,” he said.
“Yeah.” The coffee was too hot to drink.
“I know Stanley was not a good person. Everyone knows that. His death is another in a long line of casualties.”
“You say that like it’s a war.”
“It is.”
I thought about that for a second. “I spoke with Goodwin,” I told him.
“I knew you would. We, the four of us, that is…” His mug almost touched his lips. “Three now. But I hope you’re going to join us.”
I managed to laugh, but it kind of fell from my lips.
He raised an eyebrow. “That sounded sinister, didn’t it?”
I nodded. “There’s still four, if you include me.” I said it without thinking. Was this really what I wanted? I thought again of Victor holding the Witchblade, its edge dripping his brother’s blood.
Victor’s eyes widened just a fraction. “Thank you.”
“Tell me everything, Victor. From the beginning.”
“The beginning is a tricky place.” He leaned forward, elbows on knees. “Along with Goodwin and Polly, we are up against the darkness hidden beneath what surrounds us. Everyday life is not as solid as you’d think. The Shadow Fabric is a powerful concentration of evil. Monstrous energies exist in its every thread.”
“How did it take Stanley away?” I thought of how the man’s dead eyes disappeared into the folds of the Fabric.
Victor shook his head. “Up until now, I’ve only read about it. I have never witnessed it.”
“How old is it?”
“The Fabric predates the 17th century, for that’s when its existence became truly evident. Evil has, after all, been with us since time immemorial, and through the ages it has manifested itself in countless ways.”
“I felt the evil when Stanley opened the violin case.”
“It was the practice of witchcraft that threw its potency to dangerous levels when witches across the globe stitched the Fabric. They channelled through one another the shared burden using gateways of darkness.”
“You’re kidding?”
“My friend, I’m afraid not.”
I didn’t know what to say.
“The Fabric’s power,” he continued, “escalated with each stitching of a new piece.”
“Stitching?”
Victor held up his hand and flicked his eyes at the window. “That’s where the Witchblade comes into it.”
My eyes followed his. Another blue sky.
“To give some kind of timeframe here,” he continued, “a reign of unceremonious witch hunts took place about twenty years before this city was ravaged by the Great Fire in 1666. Have you ever heard of Matthew Hopkins?”
I shook my head.
“Hopkins,” he said, “was the self-appointed Witchfinder General, responsible for the ruthless persecution of countless witches, and it is to him that the athame is said to have once belonged. According to records, he sent to the gallows more witches than any other witch hunter. He was only twenty-four at the time and his career spanned little more than a year. There were many easy targets. The accused were often elderly women living as outcasts from the local community. Never a problem for anyone to accuse an unfriendly neighbour with a deep frown or too many wrinkles. Or eyebrows joining in the middle. Anyone with an unfortunate and unattractive appearance was a candidate for trial.”
“That’s ridiculous.”
“Another cause for suspicion was the Devil’s Mark, as was called, which came in obvious forms such as warts and moles. Birthmarks, of course. A blemish, no matter how faint, would suggest the Devil has marked them as one of his own. Any such mark would confirm suspicion. The theory was, every witch who kept a familiar—a demon disguised as an animal—fed it with drops of their own blood. These imps would feed at special teats. A wart or raised mole would prove suitable.”
My lip had curled upwards. This was disgusting.
“Of course,” he said, “many were witches. The problem was, people began doubting the Witchfinder General’s integrity. Judges queried him about the trials and his means of determining whether the accused was a witch or not. They suggested it was nothing short of torture and persecution. His fees, too, were equally questionable. Don’t get me wrong, Leo, I don’t condone such behaviour if the man was a fake. If he was making money from a town’s superstitions and unfounded finger pointing, well, he knew a witch when he saw one. He simply became misguided in his quest.”
I pinched the bridge of my nose, frowning.
“Anyway, Leo, you may wonder where I’m going with all this. Well, it was the tools he used.”
“Right.” I couldn’t care less for a history lesson. A man had died.
“He had a number of assistants known as witch-prickers. So we’re back to the Witchblade. It was with a knife the witch-pricker would make a decision.”
“How?”
“They’d prick the accused with the blade, concentrating particularly around the Devil’s Mark. If they didn’t bleed, then there was no doubt about it, they were a witch. This brings us full circle, right back to the authenticity of the witchfinders.”
“Huh?”
“They used retractable blades to make more money.”
“Oh.”
“Precisely. These blades were nothing like the Witchblade, they were in fact pins, or simple metal spikes. The Witchblade, throughout known records, is referred to as an athame and has nothing to do with witch-pricking.”
“Doesn’t matter to us anyway, Victor. That bitch stole it from you.” I reminded myself how it felt to look down the gun barrel.
“Yes.” His eyebrows weaved across his forehead. “We need to get it back.”
“Thought you might say that. So what is an athame? What’s it got to do with the Fabric?”
“An athame is
a knife traditionally carried by a witch for ceremonial purposes.”
“What? Are you saying this guy Hopkins was a witch? You said he owned the Witchblade.”
“Plenty of evidence suggests he owned it, yes. Whether he was a witch himself…”
“What does that mean? He used it on witches?”
Victor nodded. “His assistants would use the retractable pins to make money on the falsely accused, while Hopkins used the athame on a true witch. So, the blade’s powers never drew blood. It absorbed it, and so proving the accused was in fact a witch.”
“If the knife was used for ceremonial purposes, I guess Hopkins stole it from a witch.”
“Quite possibly. Or someone gave it to him with the knowledge of what he could do with it. Ultimately, it means the Witchblade’s origins are wrapped in as much mystery as the Shadow Fabric.”
“You don’t really know where it came from.” My jaw tightened.
“There are references to it being forged in a place called Beneath, and we know it has power over the Shadow Fabric. A dangerous weapon ordinarily, fusing with whomever holds it. It feeds on your deepest emotions.” He rubbed his face. “That’s why the Fabric made me kill my brother.”
“Victor—”
“The combination made it happen. The blade heightened my hatred for him…my fear of him…and with close proximity to each other, the shadows powered up, took charge and literally forced my hand.”
“Tell me about this.” I pointed to the book on Necromeleons. It sat in the centre of the coffee table beneath the smaller one I’d fallen asleep with.
“Necromeleons. Not to be confused with the Necronomicon, which is the Book of the Dead. However, it isn’t too far from its origins. The dead.”
“Nice.” I shook my head and lowered my eyes. My feet fidgeted.
“Necromeleons is proving a bugger to decipher. Some passages remain impossible. Typically the ones I know to be important. I’ve been translating that hefty volume for a very, very long time. It’s not as easy as translating its smaller friend there, Fludd’s book.”
“They’re in mixed languages.”
“It wasn’t uncommon practise to write mysterious works in a mixture of tongues.”
“Of course.”
“The 16th-century astrologer Nostradamus completed his most famous works in a combination that included French and Latin. It was said to throw off the Spanish Inquisition. Interestingly, one of his verses prophesised the Great Fire of London. Most likely a coincidence.”
“That’s just confusing.” I folded my arms tight across my chest.
“Fludd’s book wasn’t written in a mix of languages. It’s only that particular copy. I have no idea how Lucas came by it.”
“The guy…” I almost said ‘who was tortured in the jungle’. “The guy with the bookshop?”
“That’s him.”
“What about The Book of Leaves?”
“I’ll get to that later. Back to Necromeleons.”
“Yeah.” I chewed my lip.
“A necromeleon is what we call a living dead being.”
“A zombie?” I kicked my feet and leaned forward, a stack of books tumbling over. “This is ridiculous.”
“Please, Leo.”
“This is a load of shit.”
“No, believe me, it’s not.”
“You’re talking about zombies.”
“They’re not zombies.”
My face grew hotter.
“Not entirely,” he continued. “Unlike zombies in fiction, the necromeleon doesn’t last long. There’s only a brief spark of life. A piece of the Shadow Fabric essentially charges the awakened corpse. At the same time, it feeds off the dwindling energies. Eventually, once there is no longer any life force to drain, it dies again.”
“Hang on, slow down.” I scratched my stubble. “You’re telling me the dead can walk?”
“Yes. Reanimated by the properties of the Shadow Fabric. Whether in its entirety and close proximity, or as a single patch detached from the main bulk of the Fabric.”
“Shit. You say it so matter-of-factly.”
“These are facts, Leo.”
“Necromeleon. Chameleon?”
“Quite possibly, yes. The changing from death to life. Taking on the substance of what surrounds it, or penetrates it. Namely the shadows.”
“Who wrote it?”
“Anonymous, and it goes back centuries.”
“I can see that.”
“The majority of it is a collection of works and records spanning the last four thousand years. Although it does contain the odd reference or two dating back to the beginning of time.”
I laughed. “Of course it would.”
“This battle has been going on since darkness gave way to light. A battle we’re caught up in without the world even knowing of it.”
“Good versus evil.”
“That’s what it always boils down to, certainly.”
“How’d you guys get caught up in all this?”
“The passing of generations and circumstance.”
“Circumstance. Like me.”
“Yes.”
“Who are you Victor?” I leaned back, shaking my head. The cushions smothered me. I tugged at one and shoved it aside.
“Throughout the years there has always been an ‘us’. We have no name. We’ve been incorrectly referred to as the Shadmen, or even Keepers of the Light. It means nothing. We are who we are, following past generations on a quest now diluted by science and technology. A quest once as strong as any superstition and spiritual belief with roots to the time when man first discovered that fire can hold back darkness.”
I wanted to believe—I almost did believe, given I’d witnessed the Shadow Fabric do its thing—yet something told me it was a windup. All jokes on me, guys, come out from behind the curtain.
Victor’s voice strained as he added, “We are here to protect and serve the world without humankind actually knowing it.”
“The Fabric.” I tapped a fist against my chin. “It’s a concentration of evil, I get that. And it has the power to bring back the dead. Why did Stanley have it? Why did you want him to wear gloves?”
Victor, his eyebrows twitching, didn’t answer immediately. Eventually, he said, “I don’t know how he came by it. We’ve searched for a long time, ever since we became involved. No one has seen it for three and a half centuries. Since 1666 to be precise. Fire is a means of its destruction. And according to records, there have been many attempts. Yet always there remains a thread or two, just enough to manifest itself again. The Fabric’s near destruction started The Great Fire of London. Followed, or possibly traced, to Pudding Lane. Maybe it was chased there, being carried by someone with either good or bad intent, who knows? Maybe it had expanded into such a mass it travelled of its own accord. Back in 17th-century London there were many shadows…”
“Travelled. How is that possible?”
“Once the Shadow Fabric is powerful enough, having absorbed enough life force to become an entity in itself, it can move with ease.”
“An entity?”
“A being born of darkness. The Shadow Fabric is already sentient life, and once strong enough, it would be able to haunt.”
“Like ghosts?” This was getting too much. Ridiculous.
“Haunt or haunting, and I’m not talking about poltergeists and spirits. They are a very different kind of haunting. In this context, it’s a term used for travelling between planes of existence. We are on one side, and darkness is on the other. That place is known as Beneath. Once charged with enough life force, the Shadow Fabric can be a gateway. And so other entities could come through.”
I rubbed my face. This was all incredible stuff, and I felt like I was in a dream. “So the Fabric exists on stolen life force.”
“Yes.” Victor nodded. “In the 17th century, whichever group of people were after it, their intentions were just. Much the same as ours. And so, in a bakery, they held it back with the Wit
chblade. Pinning it to the ovens, as far as I’m to understand. An ideal place to burn it, wouldn’t you say? Clever. Fire was on hand. And they used it. The fire spread and many people died…yet saved the entire human race.”
“Here we are, present day, and Stanley found it.”
“As for the leather gloves…” He sat up—the more he’d talked the more the sofa swallowed him. “Leather is dead flesh, if you think about it. Without life force to energise the Fabric, wearing such gloves enables it to be safely handled. In theory.”
“I see.” That explained why Victor always wore gloves; it made sense now. At least the part about the gloves. The rest? Simply incredible. I didn’t know what to believe.
Victor shot to his feet, startling me, and I blinked.
“Let’s get breakfast,” he said.
I was relieved. My appetite for knowledge was temporarily satisfied, but my stomach had been rumbling for a while. And I had a headache.
CHAPTER 11
After a late breakfast at a café a short distance from Victor’s flat, traffic was good to us and we soon stepped into the foyer of Periwick House. A woman approached us from the reception area. Dressed in joggers and a t-shirt, she looked older and fitter than me. She had a gym mat rolled under one arm, her red hair bouncing against the towel around her neck. She crossed the marble floor as though she flew, her movements mirrored by an inverted image. I vaguely recognised her, but wasn’t certain from where. Perhaps I’d seen her around before I went travelling. As always, I didn’t trust my memory.
Behind her, a man and a young girl tried to keep up. The woman beamed at Victor. “I hope you’ll be in my class tomorrow morning. Yoga, remember?”
