The Haunting of Alaizabel Cray

by Chris Wooding

  “She is lost to us,” the Devil-boy husked. “Leanna Butcher has perhaps a week to live. All we can do is hope that it is Stitch-face and not the Fraternity who have her; for if the Fraternity can draw out the spirit inside her, then we must prepare for the end.”

  For a time, there was only blackness, an absence of mind. Then Thaniel stood in the moon-silvered darkness. “Alaizabel,” he whispered. “Come back to me.”

  A GATHERING

  CURIEN BLAKE 17

  Pyke’s mansion was a block of darkness against the November night. Dusk had not long passed, and lights burned inside against the gathering blackness, tiny spider-eyes glowering from the gloomy monolith. It sat in isolation amid a ruff of evergreens, which soughed in the wind and rustled to each other in disapproval of anything and everything. A winding country road led to a gate with wrought-iron creepers twisting between its bars, and from there the great driveway ran in a circle around a flower bed, whose hardy winter blooms had turned to ice and velvet in the moonlight.

  It was perhaps an hour from Redford Acres by carriage, the lone occupant of a hill of many trees. Usually it sat silent, its colonial curves gilded in the glow of the tall lamp-posts that guarded the driveway. But tonight its halls rang with voices, the chime of decanter to glass, and the mutter of plots and seduction.

  “Maycraft,” said Pyke, the single word combining a greeting and an introduction for the benefit of the tall man who stood with him. “You’re late.”

  “Mammon,” the Inspector replied, purposely using Pyke’s forename because he knew how it irritated his host. He glanced around the room, still flustered from his ride. “I was dealing with business. I hope you know they’ll fry me for being away while another Green Tack murder shows up.”

  “I think you’ll find you need not worry,” Pyke said, blinking his heavy-lidded eyes. It occurred to Maycraft for the first time that the Doctor resembled nothing more than a vulture, with his pinched, balding head perched on a scrawny neck. He turned his attention to Pyke’s companion. With his long coat and stetson clashing terribly with the elegant dress of those who surrounded them, he was the only other one in the room apart from Maycraft who was not dressed for the occasion.

  They stood in one of Pyke’s reception rooms, which had been decorated in a style befitting the atmosphere of the house. Powder-blue walls, wooden settees with floral designs on their thin cushioning, white plaster edging on the ceiling; heavy gold frames circumscribed grim portraits of elder statesmen all around them. Pyke had once described it as “Independence-era Philadelphian” and Maycraft, being no critic of interior design, was happy to take his word for it. The Doctor had always had a curious affinity for America. That explained the person standing to his left, who, under other circumstances, might have ended up in one of the Doctor’s treatment cells.

  “You seem distracted, Maycraft,” Pyke observed blandly.

  “Doesn’t everyone?” he retorted, motioning at the small knots of people who stood about the room. High-society folk, talking about high-society things in which a man like Maycraft had little interest; but their facade was a poor one, and the nervous glances they threw towards Pyke betrayed their unease.

  “What’s going on?” he hissed, once Pyke had taken his meaning. “Why hasn’t it happened?”

  “All in time,” Pyke said. “For now, I don’t believe you two have ever met face-to-face?”

  “Curien Blake,” said the taller man, in a slow American drawl.

  Maycraft shook his hand and introduced himself, mustering the bare minimum of politeness towards a man he already despised.

  Curien Blake was a wych-hunter of great renown—some would say infamy—who hailed from Kentucky in the United States. He had emigrated to England seven years ago, no doubt fleeing the results of his habitual over-enthusiasm with his Remington six-shooters. There, Blake met Doctor Pyke, who was impressed both by his ruthlessness and his entirely mercenary principles. The Doctor used him on occasion to clear up little mistakes that the Fraternity made. Sometimes a Rite would go awry; sometimes a particular wych-kin would need to be captured or destroyed; and sometimes, a person knew too much to continue breathing. Blake was equal to every task.

  Maycraft hated him. Perhaps he was a useful asset to the Fraternity, but he was an odious man with a penchant for violence that bordered on sickening. He had heard tales of Blake beating a victim to death with the butt of his pistol so as not to waste a bullet; he had heard also how he disguised the murder as a burglary by ransacking the house and shooting the mans wife. Then there was the Fraternity judge who had begun to take the quite unfortunate view that he wanted to leave the fold. Pyke told Blake to “persuade him otherwise”. Blake kidnapped his eight-year-old daughter, trussed her up like a chicken and threw her in the Thames. He then reminded the judge that he had two more daughters and a wife, and if he should ever think of leaving the Fraternity again, they would follow his eldest child down.

  Maycraft was not a man of principle, but Curien Blake’s cold-bloodedness repulsed even him.

  To avoid making conversation with the man, he searched the room again. Here, a portion of the Fraternity was assembled: judges, barristers, doctors, politicians, a mayoral candidate from Essex; the highest strata of society. They came beguiled by the promise of joining a group comprised of the most powerful men and women in London, bewitched by greed for success, knowing that with people such as these helping them out, they could not fail to get all that they wanted. Beneath them were the less affluent, those who were influential because of their jobs. Nurses, civil servants, nannies, secretaries, policemen, even postmen; all placed so that records could be changed, messages could be intercepted, people could be coerced. And there had been more than one occasion when a baby had gone missing from one of London’s many orphanages, and found its way into the Fraternity’s ceremonies.

  People who were approached by the Fraternity were drawn first by the social advantages it offered. Indeed, it was Maycraft’s disgust at being passed over for promotion twice that led him to join, after he was approached and promised he would not be passed over a third time. The initiation into the cult came after, once people had been “helped”. They were indebted to the family by then, and most felt the ceremonies would be harmless enough. Atheism or a certain elasticity of religion was an important factor in the choice of people to approach. It was after they saw what the cult could do that they began to believe, and hunger for more. Those who were firm in their refusal to participate—and there had been mistakes in the past—were either blackmailed into silence or disposed of.

  They were all here, waiting for Pyke to speak. Waiting for him to tell them why his promise had gone unfulfilled.

  Why hadn’t their gods been unchained?

  A hush spread over the assembly as Pyke ascended the curved stairway. The stairway was part of a symmetrical pair; its twin snaked up to meet it from the dark stone floor of the main hall. Where they met, there was a short balcony with two oak doors on either side, leading deeper into the body of the mansion. It was here that Pyke stopped, leaning on the scrolled teak banister and looking over the upturned faces of his congregation, who had fallen silent in expectation.

  Maycraft had been left standing with Blake. The American gave him an oily and entirely false smile.

  “I see a portion of our number have decided to stay at home and decline my invitation,” Pyke said, his steady voice knifing through the guests. It was a measure of his importance that he did not concern himself with introduction or preamble. The assembly murmured and looked about, trying to establish who was absent, who they could feel superior to. Pyke did not give them time.

  “I will not prolong your agony of uncertainty by waiting until dinner to make the announcement you came to hear,” he said, standing back from the railing and surveying them with vulpine interest. “Many of you have travelled some distance from your retreats. Those of you who decided to stay in London have had a shorter trip, but such are the benefits of the fa
ithful.”

  He smiled coldly. It was no secret that Pyke thought little of those members of the Fraternity who had chosen to escape the capital in the face of the impending cataclysm. London would be the epicentre of the Fraternity’s ascendancy, and the cautious—the faithless, Pyke would say—feared to be in the heart of the furnace until they had tested its heat.

  “The chackh’morg was due for completion yesterday. The first stage of our victory should have come into effect. What you all want to know is: why not? What went wrong? That’s what you all want to know.”

  The congregation looked faintly guilty, even though it was they who had been summoned by Pyke. Curien Blake examined the fingernails of his left hand.

  “Let me enlighten you, then,” Pyke said. “Yesterday, the final sacrifice in the sequence of the chackh’morg was interrupted by an outside influence. Wych-hunters, to be precise.”

  The congregation was overtaken by a tide of mutters. Pyke waited for it to subside, the final whispers draining away into the corners of the room and fading to nothing.

  “Our agent was able to fatally wound his victim,” he continued, “but inconveniently, she has as yet failed to die. It is, however, only a matter of time before she succumbs to the injuries dealt to her. When her last breath has been drawn, then the chackh’morg is complete and the first stage will begin. This is a minor setback only; the greatest minds in medicine could do nothing to save her now, and besides, as I’m sure you’ll agree, most of them are right here in any case.”

  His joke was met by a smattering of laughter, easing considerably the tension in the room.

  “There is, however, another reason that I summoned you here. I have need of you all once again. A complement of sixty must attend for a recitation of Chandler’s Distillation. I expect volunteers by the end of dinner. The recitation is tonight at one hour past midnight. I will supply you with details of the venue.”

  Tonight?Maycraft thought in surprise. But that means... He turned to Blake automatically, his eyes asking the question. Blake smiled languidly and touched the brim of his stetson.

  By thunder, how Maycraft hated that man.

  THE GIRL IN THE WHITE SHIFT

  AN ILL MEETING 18

  The room was low and square, shabby and derelict, with bare stone walls roughly carved. Firelight sent slivers of shadow darting through the crevices and grooves, jabbing and retracting like rapiers. It was swelteringly hot, and the scent of sweat and blood was thick and heavy enough to choke. The walls were a chaos of symbols, here thick lines of dark, flaking red, there a close press of sigils drawn with the same stuff. Handprints vied with neatly scribed Wards for space on the dirty stone, spreading across ceiling and floor until it seemed that the room was a dark womb of crusted gore.

  They were there, the people masked in mirrors. Robes of plain crimson, cowls that drooped over smooth ovals of reflective glass that were their faces. Each one of the cultists wore a picture of the scene before them beneath their hood; the bright pit of burning coals, the loose crowd of their companions. They were chanting in a low monotone, a harsh, guttural language that was ugly and repellant to the ear.

  There was a grid over the firepit, and an iron framework above that, a tall assemblage of supports that formed the hollow outline of a cube. Hanging inside the cube was a hammock of thick ropes, each rope dark with Wards; and inside the hammock, wrapped like a fly in a spiders web, was AJaizabel Cray.

  Her eyes focused and unfocused uncertainly on the blurred sea around her. She was unbearably Hot, her skin trickling with sweat, her entire body seeming to be melting like wax. Cradled in the hammock, her veins drenched with drugs, she was only barely aware of who she was, let alone where she had ended up or how she had come to be here.

  The monotone grew in volume, swelling around her. Beneath her, on the grille above the firepit, a wide iron bowl was catching the sweat that dripped constantly from her body, soaking through her thin white shift. Her throat and lips were dry; her blonde hair clung to her face in wet strands; her breath came laboured and heavily. She remembered nothing, knew nothing, except the heat and the incomprehensible strangeness all about her. A newborn babe, looking at an unfamiliar world through bewildered eyes, completely at the mercy of others.

  There was something stirring inside her, a presence, a voice that radiated a sinister glee. It was saying something, something, something... the sounds would not gel into coherence. She frowned briefly in consternation, trying to concentrate her way past the fuzz that surrounded her.

  !!Yes!! Yes!! Oh, you thought you were so clever; my pretty thing!! But who’s clever now? Eh? I said, who’s clever now? You’ve been a troublesome thing to old Thatch, a most troublesome thing. I’ll see to you, oh yes. I’ll see to you!!

  Who are you? she asked herself.

  !!Thatch, I said!! Are you deaf ? I said, are you deaf??

  Alaizabel thought about that.

  I can hear you. Does that mean I’m deaf?

  !!Stupid girl!! the voice snapped, and fell silent.

  The chanting was rising in pitch now, speeding up little by little. She did not like the sounds that were being made; they reminded her uncomfortably of some other time that she wished to forget.

  What is happening? she asked the other voice.

  !!Idiot girl!! They’re taking me out of you, aye, and not before time neither. And they’ll put me in another young girl, and this time they might do it proper!! She’d best die when shes supposed to this time!! Not like you, you little scratchy sparrow. Not like you, my horrible. Ugh!! How I hate you!!

  Why are you saying that? What did I ever do?

  !!Silence!! Silence, you mean thing!!

  Alaizabel obeyed. She felt that she should be frightened, but the cosy warmth that seemed to flow outward from her heart to her extremities would not let her get excited. And she was so tired, both from the soporific effect of the heat and the dehydration that it produced.

  Now she could see something moving out of the corner of her eye, and she managed to twist her neck to observe what it was. Blurrily, she saw a girl in a white shift being brought into the room. She was drugged—Alaizabel knew that somehow—but still she struggled weakly against the mirror-faced figures that were pulling her towards the firepit.

  No, not drugged. Poisoned.

  A savage moment of clarity seized Alaizabel at that moment. That was her, a short few days ago. A different ceremony, but similar. When they joined the Fraternity, her parents had not bargained on the sacrifices they would have to make. They may not have loved their child, but they would not let the Fraternity use her as a receptacle for the spirit of Thatch. So the Fraternity kidnapped them all, killed the parents and took her anyway. Poisoned her, put her in a cradle like the one she was in now, chanted the chants. This was not quite the same; this time they were taking the foreign spirit out of her and putting it into someone new. But the girl still had to die and, even through the poison, she fought against her fate.

  Alaizabel felt a great sadness overwhelm her, and tears began to course down her cheeks. She could barely see the girl through the drug-haze, but she could feel her fear, feel her slipping away and weakening.

  ??What’s this?? What’s this?? Sad, are you?? Don’t worry; my dear. The ceremony will probably kill you, too!!

  The words were swept away by a tide of rage that boiled up from inside Alaizabel. The Fraternity! How could they play with lives like chess pieces, pawns to be sacrificed for the kings and queens and rooks? With her life? Oh, she hated them; how she hated them then, for everything that had been done to her, for the humiliation and fear and degradation and pain, and she felt the drug-haze draw back from her as clouds part for a bright shaft of sunlight, and she swore then that she would endure, she would survive this trial, and she would make them pay for what they had done to her, and to the girl who they now pushed to her knees at the edge of the firepit, and to them all.

  !!Still feisty, sparrow!! Well, you—!!

  Be silent!A
laizabel commanded with a force that stunned the other. I will not hear another word of yours, you evil, long-dead abomination. I am alive, and I will stay that way, and you will return to whatever part of Hell from which you came!

  Thatch quailed and retreated, seeming to recede within her. She was but a shade, a frail spirit. Alaizabel was still the mistress of her own mind, and anger lent her muscle to overcome the persistent effects of the drugs enough to think clearly for a short time.

  The chanting reached a crescendo and suddenly stopped. Adaizabel felt a sudden tautening in the room, the heat-baked air stretching thinner and thinner. She felt suddenly as if she was being crushed, but the crushing was coming from within, as if someone inside her were squeezing her lungs and her heart. She screamed in pain and at the horror of it, the unnatural sensation. It was a tearing of the soul, as if the core of her self was being mauled by some clawed thing. She screamed, but her throat was sandpaper and it brought fresh agonies. She screamed anyway. These agonies, at least, were natural.

  Inside her head, Thatch was screaming with her. The hammock seemed to have embedded itself in Alaizabel’s skin, sinking through her flesh as if it could dice her and she would fall in pieces into the bowl below. The Warded ropes burned, and she writhed, drugged and helpless. She bit her lip in the throes of pain, and salty blood trickled down her throat, tasting of metal.

  Then came the wrench, and it brought pain beyond imagining. The drugs that kept her quiescent were the only thing that stopped Alaizabel dying of shock. It was like she was being drawn by horses, ripped apart in every direction at once, a torture that stole her breath and flayed her mind and made her retch and spasm and weep all at once.

  The pain continued long after she thought she could not conceivably suffer any more. If she had lapsed for a moment, if she had for one second thought that she wished to die and have it done with, then she would surely have done so. It was only her will that kept her body going, her anger, her need to survive so that they would not win. And finally, finally, after aeons and eternities piled upon each other, the pain stopped, and there was a void of such bliss that she thought she really had died, and here was her reward.