Darkshines Seven

by Russell Mardell

  ‘Look at me, girl.’

  He was tall and wiry; his arms and legs not much wider than the body of her rifle that was now slung over his back. A lined and lived in face housed eyes that seemed tired of it all. His body odour was sharp and pungent, his tatty clothes smeared in dried sweat and spilt food, sticking to his body as if they were painted on. The man was waving her pistol around as he spoke, but it was no more than a weary gesticulation, a token gesture of superiority lest Mia not get the situation. ‘What you doing here? Looking for somewhere to doss the night away? Not going to be here, girl. This is private property.’ He nodded slowly to the three corpses hanging above her. ‘You see what we do to trespassers here? Tell me why I don’t do the same to you?’

  ‘Where’s my dog?’

  ‘Who’s this Sullivan I heard you mention? That your accomplice?’

  ‘I said where’s my dog?’ A familiar whine answered her question. She sat up quickly and saw that Blarney was stood just to the side of the door, a rope tight around his neck like a choke chain, the other end tied into a fourth hook in the ceiling. His eyes had lost the mischievous glint. Now he just looked angry.

  ‘Don’t you worry about him, place could do with a decent guard dog.’

  ‘You touched my dog?’

  ‘Huh?’

  ‘Don’t ever touch my dog.’

  ‘Not exactly in a position to be giving me orders, girl. You’ve gone wandered into the wrong bit of land, sweetheart. You give me answers, not orders. That’s how this is going to work, unless you just want me to string you up now? No? Didn’t think so. Sullivan? You were telling me about Sullivan.’

  ‘He’s no one.’

  ‘Why you gibbering his name then?’

  ‘I’ve been threatened by a man with a gun before. Got to say it’s kind of lost its impact.’

  ‘Well, you don’t answer my questions and you are never going to have chance to be threatened by a man with a gun again. Who you here with?’

  ‘No one. Just me and my dog.’

  ‘No. I saw you. There were two of you. I saw two people down the south end of the grounds. Who are you with?’

  ‘I told you.’

  ‘Yeah, you told me. I told you I don’t believe you. So we got a problem here then haven’t we? Huh? We going to have a problem?’

  ‘Seems to me you’re the one with the problem,’ a third voice suddenly cut in from somewhere unseen in the corridor, startling them both. It was a voice Mia recognised instantly, an inhuman and monstrous voice, and as the man turned slowly around to greet it, the sight in the doorway made Mia’s blood run cold.

  Sam, the twelve and a half year old boy she had first met in the library of City 17, stood against the swirling shadows of the corridor, staring back into the room, a smile of hideous hilarity slashed across his boyish face, yet all Mia could see was a corruption of the boy she knew, as if Sam had been pulled apart and put back together in the dark; fingers that were too long, legs that seemed to want to bend the wrong way, muscles that looked to be moving backwards and forward under a translucent skin stained by thin rivers of blood that never seemed to break. The eyes, two large shining opals that threatened to swallow his face whole, seemed to be covering the whole room.

  The man recoiled at the sight, a nervous laugh following him away from the door. ‘Whoa! What is this, school outing gone got itself lost? What are you supposed to be?’ Bending down slowly to Sam’s level, the laugh faded away as he began a closer inspection of the thing standing in the doorway. ‘Boy, you really are some freaky looking fellow. No offence…’

  The blow was hard and fast, a brutal full stop that forced the man’s head around to his right hand side so much, he was almost looking back at Mia as the eruption of blood where his nose had once been splattered the wall. A second later, the sinewy body seemed to fall in on itself and crumple into a smelly heap of sweaty rags on the floor. The thing that stood in the doorway, the body that had once been Sam, gently cocked its head to the side as those empty eyes found Mia. Blarney, a frantic, ginger blur, just along from the door, was trying desperately to gnaw through the rope that held him.

  ‘The girl that came back,’ that nightmare voice seethed. ‘A wise person, child, knows when to move on instead of going back.’ Singer moved Sam backwards into the shadows, those empty white eyes blinking once in the darkness, and then Mia and Blarney were alone again.

  ‘No,’ Mia mumbled to herself, and then again to the empty space in the doorway, to the shadows that seemed to be alive. ‘No!’ She was up on her feet in one swift motion, pulling the noose from around Blarney and then launching the rope against the wall in a rage, shouting that single word out into the corridor, then screaming it up to the ceiling. A tirade of barking responded and then Blarney was in the doorway, bucking from front to back paws. Mia bent down and snatched up her pistol from the floor without sparing the man so much as a sideways glance. Stepping over him and into the doorway, she bent down once more, picked up the toy rabbit and tucked it into her belt. ‘Let’s go,’ she said to her dog and followed him out.

  8

  The Hole

  She kept hearing it in her mind as if someone were whispering it to her. She needed to go down a level, yet for some reason she was going up. The gunshot had sounded as soon as she left the room, somewhere on the floor above, at least that’s what it seemed, and now she was charging after the sound as fast as she could, or she hoped she was. Everything was so dark, every sound so distorted, every sensation so strange that in truth the gunshot could have come from a million miles away, or maybe not even have been heard at all. There was no logic here, nothing easy and identifiable to hold on to. There was just Sam. That young boy that had saved her life and who had now…

  Mia refused to let the truth in. She wouldn’t allow herself to see that face, that hideous corruption, or hear that nightmare voice. There was only Sam. He was still there and he needed her. He was lost. Just like her.

  The Hole

  Wherever she found a light switch she turned it on. Most lights were broken, some were no more than just a tangle of exposed wires, and the meagre light that was thrown was a dim haze. She would stumble, sometimes over the detritus on the floor, sometimes over Blarney, but each time, no matter the blast of pain that would hit her through one injury or another, she pulled herself up and pushed herself on, barely even drawing breath. She followed footsteps that seemed to bounce off the ceiling and at other times they were coming from the other end of the corridor, sometimes they were right next to her. She thought she could hear giggling, the delirious peels of laughter from children at play, but she paid it little attention. She ran to the noises, any noises, and then changed direction again each time they did.

  At the top of the staircase on the third floor she tripped on the upper step and went sprawling out across the floor, the pistol flying free of her hand. Blarney was at her face instantly, burrowing his wet nose into her cheek, huffing and puffing. Pulling herself to her knees she hugged her dog close and listened for any signs or sounds, but now Mia could hear nothing beyond the steady panting of her dog and the distant rumble of thunder. Even the many scattershot creaks and clanks and groans of age seemed to have ceased from above and below her – the great old Gothic edifice seemed to be trying to hide from her as well.

  She was up on her feet, turning to follow the corridor, when a gunshot exploded just above her head. The noise was deafening, the shock and surprise, disorientating. Mia swung around, her back to her staircase, and then suddenly the shadows in front of her shifted and seemed to become one, and then they were on her, the force of their hold knocking her sideways into the wall. The heat of gunmetal was against her face as the barrel ran up one cheek to her forehead. She heard two loud clicks and then the gun was gone as quickly as it came, discarded onto the floor. She smelt the man’s breath before she could even make out his face, and then no sooner had she done so than a hand was across her mouth and she was being swung around and grappled backwa
rds. Furious barking tore through the corridor and she could feel Blarney’s body banging between them as he lunged at the man and was buffeted away with a leg and then a boot.

  ‘Don’t touch my dog!’ she shouted into a beefy, sweaty palm.

  As the hands slithered down to her throat and began to squeeze she could see light coming from an open office door to her side and she thought she saw a body there, someone lying on the floor next to a desk. She needed to look again, to look closer, to know it wasn’t Sam, but then she was dragged on. The blows she aimed at the man seemed to bounce off him, the fingers she clawed at his face scratched and prodded but could do no damage. A hand was moving into her hair now, the other was down against her back, gripping a handful of her shirt, and she was being turned around and pushed forward.

  ‘You’ve wandered into the wrong building, darling. This place is the property of The Party. Let me show you what we do to trespassers round here.’

  An empty square hole suddenly seemed to etch itself into the darkness, opening out in the wall right in front of her. She was being directed forcibly towards the open doors of an empty lift shaft.

  ‘Let’s see if you can fly, angel’

  Mia’s boots tried in vain to find purchase on the floor, as her hands and elbows swiped and jabbed at the immovable bulk pushing her on. Blarney came again, and once more he was roughly shoved away with a harsh kick of the leg.

  ‘I told you before…’ Mia screamed, as her head jerked back into the man’s face, so hard and fast that spots broke across her vision and something crunched in her shoulder. The man recoiled a step and then Mia fell out of his hold and onto the floor. She moved in a flash, her left hand shooting upwards between his legs with all the force she could muster. She heard the reassuring dull slap, the manic grunt of shock and surprise, and then she closed her hand to a fist around her target and squeezed until she had nothing else to give. The man’s screams were high and wild and wonderful to her ears. ‘Don’t ever touch my dog!’

  As if to put a final emphasis to his master’s point, a mound of ginger fur and flailing legs suddenly landed against the man’s back with a hefty wallop, lurching him off balance and pitching him forward. His hands jerked out before him, waving stupidly around for something to hold on to, but it was too late. His wild grope found nothing but empty air. Blarney landed on Mia with a gruff, satisfied grunt. A few seconds later a hideous crunching thud echoed up through the shaft, and then silence settled through the building again, as if it had always been there.

  9

  Silence ran his fingers around the grooves in the wall. Closing his eyes, he gently sniffed at the air. How many years since he had been in this cell? He had no answer. What had happened to time? His past was a blur, the images of a former life muddied in his mind, old emotions blunt. All but the anger. Nothing had stolen away his rage and his fury, ignited years past in this horrible building, and now, being back in his cell, he could feel flames licking at old wounds.

  ‘You have changed nothing.’ Silence turned to the long, marble table bolted into the middle of the floor, Audley Thinwater now strapped down tightly to it, where so many times before it had been Silence himself. ‘Even your little torture table, even that you kept untouched. Nothing in The Hole has changed. It even smells the same.’ Silence bent over Thinwater’s body and spoke into his face. ‘It still reeks of desperation.’

  ‘Listen, Jacob, we can work something out, can’t we? I was always good to you. I always liked you.’

  ‘Apart from the torture and the degradation, yes, I’m sure our friendship could have bloomed.’

  ‘You can’t blame me solely for what happened here. How long have you worked for The Party now? How many chances have you had to kill me in that time? Why now, Jacob? Why are you doing this now? I’m not to blame for what happened here, you know that. You must know that!’

  ‘Just following orders?’

  ‘You know I was!’

  ‘Just a small snout in a big trough?’

  ‘Jacob, please, please stop this!’

  ‘You don’t lie very well do you?’

  ‘I wouldn’t lie to you, Jacob. I wouldn’t do that!’

  Silence pressed his face down into Thinwater’s, forehead meeting forehead. ‘Perhaps you have forgotten who I am and what I can do? You remember? Do you remember that, piggy? That thing you called a gift. That gift that you sold to The Party? I know everything about you, you desperate, decadent, vulgar, fat fool.’

  ‘Jacob, please…please don’t hurt me. Talk to me. Let’s talk and work something out.’

  Silence turned from the table. ‘I have no intention of hurting you, nor killing you.’ There was an audible release of breath from behind him and then a great wailing sob was chased away by a loud, hacking cough. ‘But that’s not to say I won’t, of course. Who is to say how this will play out?’

  ‘B…b…but…what?’ Thinwater’s voice was high and squeaky, a small child in a ruined adult body. ‘You said…’

  ‘You are going to die today, Mr Thinwater. You should know that.’

  Silence pulled the cell door to on frantic shouts and wandered out into the building they all used to call The Hole. There had been other names for it, coined by inmates and guards over the years, but none had really done the job as well as The Hole. Silence remembered one particularly hopeful guard using the moniker The Lollipop – the building’s shape, he asserted, was very much like the lollipops his children liked so much – but nothing so sweet would ever last here. Certainly he had been correct about the shape. The Hole was accessed by one entrance, a long corridor intersected by three giant gates of metals bars which were opened and closed by a guard positioned at the first, and then that corridor fed out into a large circular room, where seven cells were positioned at regular intervals around a curved, white-washed wall. An armed guard would then sit at a table in the middle of the circular floor in plain view of each door. Between the last barred gate and the first cell, a dumb waiter was set in the wall feeding straight up to the kitchens above, and next to it, was a long, glass fronted cubicle, where a third guard would sit in front of a locked cabinet of weaponry. That was The Hole. A suffocating and oppressive building that housed those The Party feared, tried to control, or wanted dead. It was Jacob Silence’s home for longer than he could, or cared, to remember.

  Staring back down the long corridor, the three gates now opened and pushed back against the walls, he willed them on. Both of them. But mostly him. His right hand crept around to the knife sheathed at his belt, those long, bony, yet strong fingers closing around the handle. A nervous excitement crept through him. Fate. This was their fate. Singer and the boy assassin that would purport to be his killer. This was their fate. Not his. He was Jacob Silence, and he stood taller and stronger than all the rest.

  The keys to the gates jangled as his arrogant swagger took him back to his cell, to his old tormentor and over-fed bait, and Silence casually tossed them onto the ground, discarded like the irrelevance he knew they now were. Kicking the cell door open he sauntered up alongside Thinwater again and took position by his head.

  ‘The rest, what happened to the rest?’ Silence asked calmly.

  ‘What others? Jacob, please…’

  Silence held a finger to his lips, the simple gesture stopping Thinwater’s blubbering dead. ‘The seven of us, down here. The seven you tried to control and use. The seven you tormented and tortured until you got what you wanted. Those others. The poor bastards like me that you and The Party turned your beady eyes on.’

  ‘There was no one like you, Jacob. You were our most cherished…’

  ‘Spare me the platitudes and the sycophantic drivel. What did you do with the others? Did The Party get them all? Or were they sent to The Wash?’

  ‘They all came to us. All but him. Yes. All but…’

  Singer.

  ‘They saw what The Party was trying to do, they understood what they had to offer us, that their gifts were a blessing, a blessi
ng that could easily turn into a betrayal if they kept it to themselves. We needed them. We needed you. This country needed people like you to fight this war. They understood that. All but Singer. He would never relent. That bastard took delight in it. No matter how far we pushed, he wouldn’t let us use him. I mean…no…not use, Jacob, I don’t mean that, I mean work with. We worked together, for the country. It was a mutual understanding. We had the same goals and ideals.’

  ‘I never gave a damn about your goals and ideals.’ Silence leaned over the table and spoke into Thinwater’s ear. ‘I just wanted the torture to stop.’

  ‘Oh Jacob, don’t look at it like that. Yes, things were hard at the start, but how we got there shouldn’t be as important as what we have done now we are there. Look what we have achieved together!’

  ‘You mean look at all the people we have killed at your behest?’

  ‘I mean look at where the country is now compared to where it was! The seven of you…the six of you, played no small part in that.’

  ‘Where are we exactly, Mr Thinwater? You’re living in a derelict nut house, guarded by mercenaries. When was the last time you were needed or wanted? When did you last go beyond these walls? Everything is dead out there. Everything is rotten, and broken, and black. No one is climbing out of the pit we created, they are just watching it get bigger and deeper. All those you worked on here. All those you turned and all those you sent to Bleeker Hill to have their souls sucked out of them, were they all worth it? How many have your decisions killed? How many were sent to be experimented on up there at Bleeker Hill?’

  ‘It is working! The Wash is working, they are close, I know they are close! Raizbeck thinks he has found the first complete success. If he’s right then that is all the justification I need. Look how far this country fell, Jacob. We were never going to fix it without sacrifices.’