by Tim O'Rourke
“But Murphy told me that they hadn’t really killed you,” I said frowning. “He said that you were only unconscious…”
“That’s what I told Murphy,” Lilly cut in. “I was murdered and I woke up here in this station like I’ve already explained. But every time I went back, those cracks got bigger until eventually I could touch and speak with Murphy again. I wanted to be with him again, but how could I even begin to explain that I was dead – that I’d come from nowhere – through a crack? Our time together was going to be short. We made a bed by placing my fur coat on the forest floor and then we made love. It was after this I made up my lie. I told him that Marc and his brother only believed that they had murdered me when in fact I was really alive. In my heart I didn’t know when I would next return from the station and if I would be able to reach out to Murphy again. I’d heard rumours that most people could only reach through the cracks once, others more, but for most it was only the one time. So sensing this was the one and only time I would ever have to touch or speak with him again, I told Murphy I had to go on the run and that’s when I created the name Lilly Blu. If I were ever able to reach for him through a crack again, I would leave him a message in a newspaper signed in my new name. But on my return to the station, I realised I was carrying Murphy’s children inside of me. Unable to return to Murphy myself, our children were taken back through the cracks where they belonged and left with their father. I didn’t run out on him or my daughters like Murphy has believed all this time. I loved Murphy and my daughters and still do. But why had I remembered him? Why had that word Oz appeared on the departure boards? It was like someone or something had pricked a hole in my death and my past life was shining through somehow,” Lilly said.
As she said this, I thought back to the conversation I’d had with Murphy on discovering him to be back in this pushed world. He had described this world as being like a sheet of tracing paper which had been laid over the world we had been pushed from. He said the love letters which I had sent to Sophie in my old life had shown up in this world because a hole had been made in the tracing paper and they had bled through.
Staring straight at Lilly, I said, “Murphy told me that the old world – before it got pushed – is starting to make holes in this world and it shouldn’t be. He said it was like a really bad thing to happen.”
“Murphy’s here?” Lilly said, leaping up from her seat. “He got pushed into this world, too?”
“Well, yeah,” I sighed, not knowing if I’d said the right thing or not. Probably not – knowing how often I opened my mouth and fucked things up.
“Did he get the message I left for him in the newspaper yet?” Lilly asked, wringing her slender hands together in her lap.
“What message?” I said, looking up at her. “What newspaper?”
“The piece of newspaper Sam has,” she said. “It’s on the back of that article Sam has about Kayla being murdered by her father, Doctor Hunt, in the mountains.”
I remembered Murphy showing me Kayla’s headstone in that graveyard and telling me how Hunt had murdered both her and Isidor in this world. He had believed them to be winged creatures from below ground. Murphy had suspected that Hunt had somehow remembered this from the world before it had been pushed. I now wondered if Murphy had been right in what he’d told me. Perhaps Hunt had started to remember? Perhaps cracks had started to appear in his life. Just like Lilly – Pen – had revisited Murphy by stepping through the cracks.
“Has Murphy seen the newspaper clipping?” Lilly asked again.
“I don’t know anything about any newspaper clipping, and as far as I’m aware, neither does Murphy,” I sighed, desperately trying to fit together everything I’d learnt from Murphy and was now learning from Lilly. I knew all the pieces must fit together – but how?
“Is that news clipping important?” Jack said, looking at me, then at Lilly.
“Probably,” Lilly breathed, slowly sitting down next to me again. She looked deeply shocked. Scared.
“Are you okay?” I asked, still not sure if I should have said anything about Murphy or not.
“Murphy was wrong,” she whispered, looking at me, her eyes wide and bright.
“About what?” I asked.
“The holes he was talking about, although I call them cracks, they are a good thing,” she said.
“How do you know that?” I said, feeling confused. “Who told you?”
“The same person who carried my daughters in that cardboard box back to Murphy,” she said.
Both Jack and I stared at her blankly.
Lilly looked over her shoulder in both directions, as if fearing that some enemy might be eavesdropping. Then, leaning in close to me and Jack, she whispered, “The old guy in the ticket booth told me. He said if we want to push the world back, we have to make as many cracks as possible. We have to destroy this world.”
Chapter Nine
Jack
“How would a simple ticket seller know so much?” I asked, loosening the bandana about my neck. In fact, how did the old black guy with the wizened face and fuzz of white hair know anything? I’d been back in this world two hundred years or more and what Lilly was explaining was all new to me.
Lilly shot a glance over her shoulder back towards the ticket booth where the old guy continued to punch out tickets for the never ending stream of dead travellers who waited in line. The marble floor seemed to tremble beneath my feet as the sound of arriving and departing trains rumbled deep below ground. Lilly leant in close again, like a coach giving a halftime briefing, and said, “His name is Noah, and he’s not just a ticket seller – he is way more important than that. He knows pretty much all there is to know about the worlds being pushed – but not only that, he knows about this station and the others scattered about this world.”
Both me and Potter shot a glance at the ticket booth and the old guy sitting happily behind the glass.
“So he’s like the Yoda of the railways?” Potter said, looking back at Lilly and popping a cigarette into the corner of his mouth.
“Yoda?” Lilly said with a curious stare. “I said Noah.”
Potter shook his head, and jetting streams of blue smoke from his nostrils, he said, “Forget it, sweetheart.”
Why did he always have to be such a fucking jerk? I wondered. I glared at him, then turned my attention back to Lilly. “So how does he know so much?” I asked her.
Lilly looked back over both shoulders in turn again, then back at us. Just above a whisper, she said, “Noah is an Elder.”
“That would account for all the wrinkles,” Potter cracked, cigarette dangling from the corner of his mouth.
Growing ever more frustrated at Potter’s infantile attempts at humour, I hissed, “If you can’t keep your fucking mouth shut, why don’t you do both me and Lilly a favour and fuck off…”
“Okay… okay,” Lilly breathed. “Let’s try and keep this nice, shall we?”
“Well, he’s starting to piss me off,” I scowled. “Why does he have to keep coming out with dumb fucking remarks the whole time…?”
“Who are you calling dumb?” Potter shot back at me. “I was just saying that what Lilly said made sense, as I’ve seen under those Elders’ hoods and their faces are so freaking wrinkled and old, they’ve had to be stitched back together.”
“You’re such a lying bas…” I started, but Lilly cut over me.
“And why do you think they look like that?” Lilly asked the both of us.
Potter shrugged and I remained silent. I didn’t know the reason.
“They are literally falling apart – they are dying,” Lilly started to explain.
“So what about the old dude in the glass box?” Potter said, grinding out his cigarette on the marble floor with the heel of his boot. “He looks ancient, but he isn’t quite falling apart – not yet, anyway.”
“Noah isn’t like the other Elders,” Lilly said. “He has always been different from the others, that’s why they eventually banished
him. The four remaining Elders are cruel and full of pain. In fact, that’s how they feed – that’s how they survive and have done so since time began – by living off others’ fear, unhappiness, and pain.”
“But I always thought they had the different species – the humans, the Vampyrus’ – best interests at their very hearts,” I said.
“That’s what they’ve wanted you all to believe,” Lilly said.
“Their hearts are black and twisted like shrivelled prunes,” Potter said. “I saw those too under their robes when they brought me back.”
Potter spoke with a sudden seriousness as if something had clicked into place for him.
“You’re right, Potter,” Lilly said, looking at him. “There is no love in their hearts. Every decision they have taken since the beginning of time hasn’t been for the benefit of the humans or anyone else. The only people they have helped are themselves. Life was only created so they could feed off its misery and pain. They enjoyed the fact that the humans and the Vampyrus fought over the Earth.”
“So why separate the two species from each other? If what you are telling us is true, then wouldn’t they have got a kick out of us destroying ourselves?”
“And once both races were dead, what then?” Lilly said. “No, the Elders had to keep both races alive, but in misery and in pain. The Elders learnt that some mixing had taken place between the Vampyrus and humans, so they forbade it. They fed off the misery caused by separating those that had fallen in love. But in time, even those humans and Vampyrus who had once loved forgot each other and their hurt and pain grew weaker. So what then? How would the Elders survive if the two races forgot about one another? They needed to be reminded again. So a little boy named Elias Munn was chosen. Unbeknown to him, the Elders made sure the boy discovered a hole between the two worlds. And as the Elders hoped, Elias Munn fell deeply in love with a human. And when Elias was rejected by her, he tore out his lover’s heart and the Elders gorged themselves on his heartbreak and torment. They stood back in the shadows and watched Munn cause mayhem for hundreds of years as he slowly encouraged other Vampyrus above ground, where they infiltrated human cites and fed off those living there. Again, members of the two different species fell in love and had children – the half breeds. Again the Elders forbade those relations and fed off the pain that caused.”
“But what about us, Lilly?” I said, rubbing at my narrow temples with my fingers. “They afflicted us with the Lycanthrope curse because we murdered women and children. Isn’t that exactly what the Elders would’ve wanted?”
“And has our race stopped killing now that we’re wolves?” Lilly asked, staring straight back at me.
“No, we kill more,” I said thoughtfully.
“Exactly,” Lilly sighed deeply. “Not only do the Elders feed off the pain and suffering of our victims, but now they also suck on the pain and torment we feel as we struggle with the curse. They sold us a false promise that if we stopped killing then the curse would be lifted, but they knew we would never beat it. Look at the pain and suffering the curse has caused us. As wolves, we’ve struggled our whole lives to kick the habit of killing. The Elders are now getting twice as much pain and suffering than before they cursed us – when we were just killers. We were enjoying murdering – but not any longer. Our pain has become as great as our victims’. The fun has been taken out of it. The Elders can’t afford for anyone or anything to have too much fun for too long.”
“And I thought you two were a couple of evil motherfuckers,” Potter said, looking at us. “You look like a couple of freaking saints compared to the Elders.”
“I’ll take that as a backhanded compliment,” I barked at him.
“Take it anyhow you like,” Potter said, lighting another cigarette.
“But what I want to know is where Kiera fits into all of this? Why does she have to choose between the humans and the Vampyrus?”
Lilly looked at Potter and said, “Where there is darkness, there must also be light,” she said. “You can’t have one without the other. Noah knew that and that’s why he was banished. He was the light shining brightly on the Elders’ dark plans. Noah knew that it was inevitable that at some point in time, someone would come who wouldn’t give in to the Elders’ hate and pain. This person would be strong, show courage, and always look to the light when thrown into darkness. The Elders knew that such a person would be dangerous if he or she managed to set a shining example and get others to follow. They suspected that if ever such a person should come, then they would have to have more strength than just a mere human or Vampyrus, and would therefore be the best of both species – a half breed or half and half. This only made the Elders more intent on forbidding mixing between the humans, Vampyrus, and Lycanthrope,” Lilly explained.
“But despite their manipulations and cunning, Kiera came,” Potter said thoughtfully, cigarette smoke lingering around his fingers.
“When they discovered how resilient Kiera was when they saw how she would never hate and could overcome any obstacle, then they knew she was the one they feared,” Lilly said. “But in their twisted hearts, they realised that perhaps her kindness and love could be their strength.”
“How?” I asked her.
“At first they were happy to linger in the shadows and watch Luke Bishop – Elias Munn – try and break her, but his plans were thwarted because she fell in love with you, Potter, and not him.”
“You can’t blame her, I guess,” Potter said with that cocky smirk of his.
Like me, Lilly ignored his comment and continued. “The Elders knew they had to get Kiera to choose between the two races – the humans and the Vampyrus,” she said.
“But why?” I asked.
“Because she’s a half breed,” Lilly said, and both me and Potter shared a brief knowing glance. “For Kiera to make a choice between the two different sides would be like a mother choosing between her two children. Now if Kiera had made that choice, can you even begin to imagine the pain, the guilt, the torment she would have felt forever more knowing that she had destroyed an entire race of people – her people – whichever way she made her choice? The Elders would’ve fed off her pain for an eternity.”
“But I thought it was Luke who was making her choose,” Potter said.
“The Elders wanted him and you to believe that,” Lilly explained. “They were manipulating Luke because they knew he was evil, greedy, and weak. They could never let anyone know it was their wish and plan alone for Kiera to choose. Why do you think Kiera had to make her choice in the Dust Palace? The Elders wanted to be there when she did so. They wanted to see the pain in her eyes – get a whiff of her anguish and trap those feelings of despair in their lair.”
“But Kiera wouldn’t be manipulated by Luke, and she didn’t choose. She sacrificed herself by throwing herself at me,” I said, remembering how she had run towards me in the Dust Palace. “She would’ve rather have died than cause anyone else pain.”
“And the Elders were furious,” Lilly whispered. “They wanted to punish her for what they saw as her trickery. But they also needed her.”
“Why?” Potter asked before I’d the chance to ask the very same question, which was on my lips.
“From what I’ve heard, this Kiera Hudson is like no other – she is unique,” Lilly said.
“She is,” Potter cut in again, his jet-black eyes clouding over as if picturing her in his mind.
I thought of her, too, and how she had had such an effect on me in the little time I had spent with her in that room. Even though I had tortured and killed her father in front of her, even though I was threatening to kill the man she loved and her friends, she still wouldn’t give up on me. It was like she saw something in me that I couldn’t see. Anyone else in that very same position would’ve killed me – had their revenge for everything I had done to them – but not Kiera. Even though I could see she was in pain at the sight of her father dying before her, she hadn’t given in to that pain and killed me, handed me over to
Potter and Murphy who were coming for me. It was like even in the darkest hour of her life, she had seen some flicker of light. Had she seen that flicker of light in me? I wondered.
“The Elders realised that those that love the most hurt the most,” Lilly continued. “So they weren’t quite finished with your friend Kiera Hudson yet. The Elders bought her back…”
“So they could fuck with her head,” Potter said, sounding angry.
“Not my choice of words, Potter, but yes, you’re right,” Lilly said. “As Jack tore Kiera to pieces in the Dust Place before the Elders, it was like her life – her very soul was unravelled for them to see. It was then they saw everything – what Kiera truly was and how they had been deceived. And for the first time it was they, the Elders, who felt pain and misery as they learnt how they had been deceived by Murphy.”
“So the Elders know that Kiera is like us?” I asked Lilly.
“She’s nothing like you two,” Potter snapped.
Ignoring him, Lilly said, “Yes, they know where Kiera came from and who and what she really is. The Elders didn’t like the fact they had been tricked – conned, they felt despair and they started to fall apart beneath their robes – it was like they were being unravelled. So they decided to punish Kiera. They wanted to cause her so much pain they hoped it would help to heal them. So they pushed her into this world where she would learn about her father, her mother, her brother, and what she really was. They would make sure she discovered what a liar and a cheat the man she loved was,” Lilly said, casting an eye at Potter sitting next to her on the bench.
Potter looked down at the ground and Lilly continued.
“They wanted Kiera to learn that Murphy had kept secrets from her, they wanted her to see her father die all over again.” And this time Lilly looked at me. “They sent Kayla and Isidor back because the Elders knew how much they were like a brother and a sister and they wanted Kiera to see them die all over again. They wanted to push Kiera into a world of pain so they could feed off her, like rats gnawing at a corpse.”
