Church of Sin (The Ether Book 1)

by James Costall

  Charlie ran back to the car. Charlie was very scared but he felt sure if he got back in the car the bang bang noise couldn’t hurt him. He could hear Mummy screaming but he would be safe in the car. Then another humungous bang, the biggest ever, and the ground jumped and Charlie fell and hurt his knee and a car was driving sideways towards him like being pulled on string but the car didn’t stop like the cars at the zebra crossing it just kept going and Charlie was very scared because the car might hit him and he felt sure that he would be hurt even more than his knee...

  Charlie landed near Mummy. She shouted things Charlie didn’t understand and threw her arms around him. Charlie liked her warm.

  “Oh, Charlie, what happened? What the Hell happened to you?”

  “I flewed here, Mummy. Like Spiderman.”

  “I don’t understand, sweetheart. What do you mean you flew here?”

  “A lady took me and we flewed together.”

  “Lady? What lady?”

  Charlie looked about but the lady with the red hair was gone. And then the biggest bang in the whole world. Even bigger than Jesus.

  Chapter 63

  The noise of the tanker igniting sent shock waves spiralling out across the terrain, thundering over the embankment sending snow and dirt flying into the air. A giant fire ball, twenty feet high, tore the sky apart. People ran - confused, distressed – in all directions. The tanker raged violently, a wall of fire, the plume of smoke blossoming high above the chaos, blotting out the light on one side of the carriageway.

  Alix sat crouched on the opposite side of the bank. She was half buried in a heap of snow and freezing cold but at least she was out of the Audi before the explosion vaporised it. Amongst the confusion, she saw Charlie reunited with his family, being pulled away from the fire, Mum weeping uncontrollably, Dad’s face red with anger and fear. They never saw her sweep their son up in her arms where he stood and catapult herself across a twenty foot distance to land softly in the snow just out of the blast range.

  Are you ready to believe now?

  Alix sat watching the drama unfold in front of her. Nearly everyone seemed to be on a mobile phone. Close by, a group of people were rolling a fat lady in the snow, desperately trying to extinguish the fire that had taken hold of her coat. Through the smoke she could see cars upturned, burnt out and abandoned. Her own car was consumed by the fire from the tanker.

  “Don’t give me that bull shit,” she said under her breath.

  What do you mean?

  “Don’t give me that are-you-ready-to-believe shit. People died in that. People... Jesus. How?”

  The Harbinger’s power is gaining. His influence expanding. We’re running out of time.

  “So you keep saying.”

  It could have been worse. The tanker hadn’t been full but the residue of fuel in its belly was sufficient to create an explosion large enough to destroy everything immediately around it. Having put out the fat lady, the group of do-gooders were restraining a distraught middle aged man looking for his wife. How quickly we can be shattered. How fragile our grip on life, she thought.

  The traffic was backed up for miles behind the blast. People had abandoned their cars, heading for the embankment. Further up the motorway, the embankment rose steeply. A small congregation of people had gathered to survey the chaos below. They stood in silence, arms around each other, clasping children tightly, gently weeping mothers and stern looking, angry fathers. For a while, the only noise was the burning tanker and the howling of the wind through the snow covered trees.

  Her own phone was lost. Ash would probably have called her a hundred times by now. She didn’t know how thinking about him being worried made her feel. That was odd but then again maybe it wasn’t. She felt anesthetised.

  This is only the start, Alix.

  “What can we do?”

  We need to speak with Harker. We’ve missed so much and I can’t remember a lot of it. I think it was when Anwick went mad. I don’t feel... I’m not sure. I can’t remember certain things.

  “What do you mean? I thought you were some sort of all powerful alien. Now you sound like a man who can’t remember where he put his car keys.”

  At no stage have I portrayed myself as an all powerful alien. I’m fallible. Like you.

  “Wait a minute, what are you saying? That you can’t actually remember what the Hell is going on?”

  No. Yes. You have to appreciate the intimacy of the relationship between the Necromire and the Host. Anwick and I were symbiotically connected. His demise was also my demise. And consequentially a lot of what happened is a bit of a blur to me. Harker will have answers.

  “How do you know she’s on our side?” That beehive was the sure sign of an evil genius, she thought.

  I’m certain about a few things. That’s one of them.

  Alix let her question sink in. She wasn’t convinced by the answer but it was difficult to read the voice in her head. It was like trying to assess herself.

  “When I visited Anwick at Innsmouth the first time around,” she chose her words carefully, “he thought... he thought he was you. Or was that you?”

  No, it was Anwick. I was trying to regain control. Unsuccessfully as it happened. By the time you got to him the madness had gripped him with a raw intimacy.

  Alix felt the cold of the snow sting her legs. She dug herself out and stood up. She felt a weight bare down on her. It was repressive. Her arm hurt. On inspection, the cut from the broken glass in her flat had re-opened. Must have been when she flew from the Audi to scoop up Charlie.

  Shit. Did she fly? What else could she do?

  How did she know the kid’s name?

  She felt angry. This wasn’t her fault, or her fight. So why did she feel so guilty? Why did she have a feeling brooding at the pit of her stomach like the lives that were just erased were her responsibility? She kicked up a pile of snow and got her foot tangled around a hidden tree route.

  “Shit!”

  She hopped around a little while, nursing her foot.

  “For fuck’s sake!” She tugged at the back of her hair. Chaos all around her. Grief. Suffering. It was nothing to do with her. It was nothing to do with her.

  Alix...

  “No! Don’t Alix me! I didn’t ask for this! I didn’t want this! I was happy. I had a job. I had a pretty good job with hours I could choose for myself and pretty good pay. Now I have to accept one of two possibilities. Either I am the host to an inter-dimensional alien from another world come to save us from some unfathomable evil or I am completely nuts. Either way, I loose. I just witnessed a shed load of people I never met die and I might have killed someone myself this afternoon while being strapped to a wall in a secret mental institute for other people who think they have inter-dimensional aliens in their heads SO DON’T FUCKING ALIX ME!”

  Another tree root buried under a heap of snow wrapped its way around her foot. She fell hard into the soft powder. When she picked herself up, she saw the snow was stained with blood from her arm.

  Alix listen, I know this is hard...

  “Oh yeah, right, you know this is hard. Of course you do. NO YOU FUCKING DON’T! You have no idea.” She picked herself up, started walking away from the wreck, careful to avoid more sneaky tree roots. “What am I supposed to do now? Everything is destroyed. Everything!”

  Actually, you may not have thought of it this way but this is pretty hard for me too. You think I want to be here? Having to rely on your meat to keep me alive? This isn’t my home. This isn’t even close to my home. It’s like you living under water. It’s fun for a few minutes but after two thousand years I’m pretty sick of it. I have thoughts, feelings, emotions and issues. Like you. I have lost everything. Like you.

  “Oh, so because you had to come here I have to suffer too. Great.”

  That’s not what I said. I’m talking about family.

  “What do you mean?”

  I mean... well, that is to say... forget it. It doesn’t matter.

 
She stopped. She had moved away further down the motorway, away from the fire. It was quieter here. The white field was surrounded by dense trees, leaves long gone, branches covered in snow, sparkling in the fading sunlight. A winter wonderland.

  “You mean Zara. So you can read my thoughts.”

  Actually I can’t. Not yet. Not unless you let me. But the feeling you have for her is so strong that even without a complete psychic connection it burns through your mind. It’s impossible to miss. I’m sorry. For what it’s worth. I might not have an organic heart, but I understand the devastation of loss. And I know you’re still looking for answers.

  The cold bit hard. She wrapped her coat around tightly. She remembered the day Zara disappeared like it was yesterday. Grief, anger, resentment. Festering within her. Writhing at the back of her mind like some malignant parasite.

  ...

  She found herself back at her family home. Her bedroom. Fluffy rugs and throws, different shades of pinks and purples clashing horrendously. Christmas decorations hang from the ceiling. A little tree, glittering with red baubles and candles, sits on the window sill. Behind, mist rises off the lake; a regiment of evergreens fading into the darkness. And rabbits. Hundreds of wild rabbits bathing in the moonlight.

  Alix sits on her bed, bare legs dangling down but not touching the floor, swinging playfully in the cool breeze from the open window. She looks at the rag bunny, pokes his nose but he doesn’t object. Inside her bedside drawer she has paper, pens, hair clips, a music box and scissors she stole from the kitchen.

  The bunny has a smiley face, cotton whiskers and big floppy ears. Kind of scary, she thinks. She pokes him again, in the tummy this time. He keeps smiling. From another room she hears the muffled sound of children’s music. And Zara, stomping around, singing. Sort of singing.

  Alix takes the scissors out of the drawer and carefully snips off bunny’s big, floppy ears. They come away easily, little bits of stuffing bleed out of the holes left by the amputation. Bunny keeps smiling. Alix puts the ears under the pillow and picks bunny back up.

  “Alix, have you seen-”

  Zara stops. Looks at her big sister holding bunny, ears having been removed, stuffing scattered around her dangling feet. Alix bites her bottom lip. She hadn’t intended Zara to see her bunny surgery, she wanted to put bunny-with-no-ears in Zara’s bed and blame it on Captain Howdy.

  “What have you done to bunny?” Tears welling up around Zara’s freckly face. Alix looks anxiously behind her at the open door leading to the landing. Mum downstairs preparing tea: chicken and vegetables. Could she hear Zara have a full blown tantrum from the kitchen?

  “Bunny had ear cancer. So I had to take away his ears to save his life. It’s called amuplation.” She was convincing. Dead serious. Zara stops to think. Ear cancer.

  Then bursts into a flood of uncontrollable woe.

  “You hurted bunny!” She wails.

  “I saved him, Zara. Don’t be a cry cry baby baby.”

  She runs. On to the landing. Alix hears the door slam hard. She throws bunny against the wall and falls back on to the bed.

  She stays awake all night. Angry at being caught but worried that Zara might be upset. If Zara went to bed sad or upset she wouldn’t sleep. Sometimes she sleepwalks and comes into Alix’s room. Once, Dad found her in the living room sleeping on the sofa. There is noise from Zara’s room. She must be up. The floorboards are creaking.

  The feeling of guilt weighing down upon her, Alix gets up tentatively. She creeps across her room, hopping over the sliver of moonlight running across the floor from the gap in the curtains and out into the corridor. She knows where each creaky floorboard is and manages to avoid each one. It’s dark, but there’s a small nightlight that Mum turns on every night so they can find the bathroom if they need to go to the toilet after lights out.

  Zara’s bedroom door is partially open. When Alix gets to it, the noise stops. Heart beats wildly. Breathing fast and heavy. She swallows but there’s no spit to go down.

  She gently pushes the door open.

  “Zara? Zara bear?”

  Silence. A heavy, muggy silence.

  A cold draft from the open window, curtains flapping in the breeze. The bed perfectly made. But no little sister.

  Panicked, Alix turns. Thinks of shouting, of waking mum and dad but she is too scared. The wind gets up, gusting past the curtains making them billow up like angry ghosts. The curtains knock off a picture from the window sending it crashing to the floor. The noise is deafening in the silence.

  Alix freezes, petrified. Then another noise. From downstairs this time. Zara might be sleepwalking. Or dad up perhaps. Please be dad up perhaps.

  She scuttles round the landing, past the bathroom and the airing cupboard where the wet towels go and to the edge of the stairway. Steep steps downwards, lined with red carpet.

  He holds Zara’s hand. At the bottom of the stairs, he stands with her, a black silhouette against the moonlight filtering through the glass in the open front door. The wind whips up a long coat around his heels. She cannot see his face, nor Zara’s.

  They look at Alix. She looks back. And slowly he turns, and gently guides Zara out of the front door where they are eventually swallowed up by the shadows.

  ...

  I’m sorry, said Azrael, his voice a cool whisper in her ear. It must have torn you apart.

  “It tore us all apart. My mother died shortly after Zara disappeared from pneumonia. She didn’t fight. Not really. My father and I don’t speak much. I think secretly he blamed me. I told that story over and over again to different people but it didn’t make much difference. They asked me the same answerless questions over and over again: did I see his face? Did I recognise him? How did I know it was a him? Was she struggling? Had she said anything earlier in the evening? Do I think she ran away because of our fight over that fucking stuffed rabbit?”

  I can’t read your thoughts but it’s there, you know. A black hole over your heart. It’s a part of you.

  “Not a day goes by when I don’t think about her.”

  She thought of Charlie. If she hadn’t saved him, hadn’t picked him and hauled him to safety, would he be dead?

  “The boy,” she said. “Charlie. When I touched him...”

  You knew his name. You infiltrated his mind, trespassed upon his little thoughts. In a split second. Yes. It is the Essence. The power that harbours within you. In time, you will learn to use it. You are no longer bound by the restrictions of your flesh. You have been given a great gift, Alix. A gift that others cannot even conceive of.

  “Fine bloody line between a gift and a curse.”

  I agree.

  She kicked up more snow and looked about her. The scene sickened her. Nearby, a police patrol bike skidded to a halt and a burley uniform dismounted, removing his helmet, speaking urgently into a radio.

  Azrael was speaking but she didn’t take it in.

  No choice, really.

  Distracted by the blazing tanker, the uniform had his back to her. By the time he had turned round, his bike was already disappearing into the mist.

  Chapter 64

  And so Grigori learnt that by combining the tree bark with his blood, he was able to open up a channel to speak directly with the Hollow One. He called it the Demon Tree and before he came to England he removed a large branch which he eventually made into the chair in which he now sat.

  He strapped his legs and waist and one hand. He held the last strap in his mouth, slid his hand into the restraint and pulled his head back. The mechanism clinked and the strap tightened, the teeth locking into place and securing Grigori to the chair. Another click and a whir as a cog at the back of the chair turned three hundred and sixty degrees. It took about thirty seconds before it clicked again and Grigori jolted, the blades sprung from their coils and cut into his arms on both sides, tore through his skin. Another slice and the blades retracted, allowing the blood to run freely, a trickle at first but then more, saturating the arms of
the chair and dripping to the floor beneath. Over time, Grigori had learnt that he needed more and more blood to enable the connection through to the Void. At what point, he wondered, would the Master require him to bleed to death for the cause.

  He felt the room begin to spin as the channel opened, his mind dividing into two. The Master took him quickly today, descending upon him and injecting himself like a cancer into every cell until he had taken everything that was human from Grigori. He struggled, gasped for air, the physical part of him felt like a rag in a storm tied to a post, flapping helplessly in the gale, holding on by a thread.

  He did not hear the Master’s words. No one heard the Hollow One speak. He felt them, burning into him, dampening the sound of his own screams. But he did not recognise them. If it was a language, then it was indecipherable. Just a sensation. The sensation of filaments, held up by some invisible force, burrowing into his skin and coiling around his nerves, and then plucked like a harp, each note brought a shock of excruciating pain but the rhythm held an ancient connotation that, if he survived the onslaught, he would carry with him to the Harbinger to decode.

  By the time the ordeal was over, and Grigori felt as though he could step back tentatively from the edge of death, he was too weak to protest at the cold metal being strapped to his wrists and the hands leading him out into the dusk.

  Part V

  The Sixteenth Law of the Ether

  Any soul whose body is destroyed by unnatural means becomes the resident of the Inter-World, his fate thereafter to be determined by Chance

  Chapter 65

  Alix supposed that the principle reason why the receptionist at 42 Essex Square Chambers was ignoring her related to the fact that she looked, and most probably smelt, like a tramp.

  The clothes she was wearing were torn and frayed, revealing small patches of blood-stained skin. Her hair looked like it hadn’t been washed in days and resembled a bird’s nest. Her nails were grubby and damaged, her face smeared with earth and other unpleasantness and her Converse shoes looked like she had been playing rugby in them. Nonetheless, she sat patiently cross legged on the plush maroon arm chair waiting for attention, looking for all the world as if a tramp sitting inside one of London’s most prestigious barrister’s chambers was a perfectly ordinary every-day occurrence.