Darkshines Seven

by Russell Mardell

  ‘You sound like a politician.’

  ‘You sound like a murderer.’

  ‘I am.’ Silence walked a circle around the table, his eyes fixed at the corridor into The Hole, at the crawling shadows that fell across the floor like spilt ink. Someone was there. Someone was watching. Silence’s hand felt for his knife again, fingers brushing along the sheath. ‘He’s close.’

  ‘Who is?’

  ‘Tell me, I’m curious, you had Singer sent to Bleeker Hill when he refused you. Why not just kill him?’

  ‘You think that was my decision? The Party needed the manpower up there. I told them, I told them what he was…’

  ‘But what’s one more madman?’

  ‘He truly did go mad, that’s what I heard. Yeah. Totally fell apart. That place destroyed him. We got rid of him in the end. They buried him out there.’

  Silence eased his knife from its sheath and then lowered his face once more, the hood falling forward and shading his eyes. Skeleton fingers played lightly around the knife hilt as the blade stroked Thinwater’s cheeks. ‘Sometimes, piggy, sometimes, some people, they can’t be buried deep enough.’

  Silence took the knife gently down Thinwater’s face and danced the blade along the flabby skin under his chin.

  ‘Hello, Milo.’ Raising his head slowly, he gazed past the shadows, and directly towards the figure he knew was standing there. He was even smaller than he remembered, the boy assassin.

  As the first gate rolled untouched to a close behind him, the lock turning with an audible clunk, Milo Singer looked out at the man who had lived here alongside him for so long, and then stepped forward out of the shadows.

  10

  Blarney picked up the scent the moment they arrived back on the first floor. His bark prompted Mia left at the foot of the staircase, out into a wide office lined corridor running along the front of the building. Her hands fumbled along the walls until she found a light switch and then a wide strip light came to life in stuttering flashes above them, illuminating a corridor that seemed to go on forever. The contents of each office were a spewed welcome mat of rubbish in the doorways, as if the rooms had been turned inside out. Doors hung limply from rusted hinges and windows were smashed, the glass shards like twinkling stars amongst the discarded junk. Moths that seemed as big as her fist buzzed and swirled from the doorways and from two open windows on the other side of the corridor that faced the unruly tangle of garden outside, and then bounced off the long rectangular light. At the furthest end, past the last office, and just past the reach of the light, a shadow moved up the wall and bent back across the ceiling, just for a moment. Sam was there, and then he was gone.

  ‘Blarney, come, with me!’ Mia set off, barging through the rubbish in the first doorway and swatting the pistol at one of the moths. Blarney weaved a path at her side, nimbly jumping the rubbish and silently snapping at anything that buzzed at him. By the end of the corridor Blarney had taken the lead, and Mia followed him around a sharp corner and then across a narrow landing to a set of metal steps that spiralled downwards into darkness. By the fifth step Mia pulled up and clicked her fingers. Blarney stopped, turned awkwardly and then trotted slowly back up to where his master was waiting, his breath arriving just before he did. ‘Wait,’ Mia whispered to him and then crouched down on the stairs, tucked an arm under his neck and buried a kiss on his pointy head.

  A heavy quiet had fallen through the building once more and Mia heard nothing but the panting of her dog. The sudden absence of the footsteps on the staircase gave her a disorientating and empty feeling, as if the thick set gloom creeping up from far below was eating through the staircase and should she carry on it would suddenly give way to nothing at all. Again she had the sensation that the very building itself was trying to hide from her. With her free hand she pulled gently at Blarney’s tail and stepped down in front of him, blocking off his busy, bustling body, so he knew to keep behind her. One further, gentle step forward and a loud clunking sound suddenly erupted up the staircase, so loud and unexpected that Mia stumbled backwards and almost toppled over the railing. Blarney was off instantly, barging past Mia and announcing himself with another throaty warble, as his nails click-clacked down the metal steps.

  ‘Blarney! Blarney, to me!’ Mia pulled herself forward on the railings and stumbled after him. ‘Blarney!’ Mia plunged down into the darkness on the tail of her dog, one hand running along the railing as the other swiped through the gloom in front of her as if it were a living thing that could be pushed back. ‘Blarney!’ She was three steps from the bottom when she finally lost her footing and went sprawling out along a smooth tiled floor. A tongue was in her face before she could even get her bearings. ‘Get off me you little shitbag.’ Mia moved his head away and got to her feet. Blarney barged his way between her legs and stood there panting, moving his rump from side to side, impatient to get moving.

  A square of light feathered with dark streaks ran across the floor of yet another darkened corridor. It was coming from an opening in the wall to her left, and Mia could hear voices again, indistinct, but close. Her left fist clenched the pistol butt, the index finger curling around the trigger, and in that instant she felt a flare of excitement spike through her as she imagined emptying the gun and silencing that voice forever. She wanted to hear him scream, wanted to know if that sound would be the sweet music she imagined. But turning into the opening, moving across the light patch, the feeling left her as quickly as it had come, squashed by a reality that taunted her with an impossible choice.

  She was now standing in front of a huge gate made of metal bars that ran from the floor to the ceiling, and just on the other side, barely six feet from the barrel of her pistol, was Sam. Further along the corridor she could see the cells of The Hole, the man standing in the doorway of the one in the centre, the knife turning in the loose grip of his right hand, and then the recognition came. He was smiling at her, and his arms were moving out to the side in a gesture of welcome.

  ‘Home sweet home,’ he said and then laughed.

  Sam was moved forward, step by awkward step, and then his head was turning to the side. ‘He screams, Mia. He screams in pain and he screams for you. You would be doing him a great goodness if you shot him dead. Pull the trigger. Kill my vessel. Kill your friend and stop his screaming.’

  ‘Take me, Singer. Take me and leave him. Please…’ Mia lowered the gun in defiance and slipped it into her belt next to the toy rabbit. ‘Take me you bastard!’ She gripped the metal bars in front of her and shook the gate. ‘Take me, Singer!’

  ‘The girl that came back. The girl who won’t kill,’ Singer’s voice oozed. ‘Oh, the sweet stench of morality. You are a girl out of time. There is no going back to where you want to belong. The world has moved on, child. And you keep trying to go back to the start.’ Sam’s head moved forward, focus now returned to Jacob Silence. ‘Naivety will put you in the ground. Goodness will seal you in.’ Sam moved on again, slowly, past the dumb waiter and out into the circular room.

  Mia could feel Blarney’s paws on her as he clawed at her trousers. ‘Blarney…’ she mumbled down at the floor, ‘with me.’

  Mia pulled away from the gate, staggered over the light spill and turned the corner, moving back towards the staircase. By the first step tears had broken. Every inch of her was shaking by the time she came out on the narrow landing and crossed towards the kitchens. She ached, she hurt, and she felt heavy with an impossible sadness, but none of that mattered because anger had found her, and right then, anger was enough.

  At the end of the landing was a tall wooden door, with a small glass window at the top, caked in dirt. Without breaking stride Mia planted a boot firmly into the door and took it clean off its hinges.

  11

  This is the boy that will kill you.

  Silence looked at the shape before him, now hunched down in the middle of the circular floor in front of the cells. Looking at him at this close distance, the very notion was ludicrous. He was so s
mall and looked so lost. Those dead eyes that stared up at him looked frightened and he knew that if he could push past that which held him prisoner he would hear Sam screaming. This was not Sam any more, that boy assassin, this was Milo Singer, his old neighbour and enemy, come home to claim all that he had left. Vengeance.

  ‘Milo?’ Silence casually leant against the cell door. ‘You think I don’t see you? You really think I can’t see past your host?’

  Sam cocked his head to one side.

  ‘You think I didn’t know? You think I didn’t sense you?’

  Behind Silence, Thinwater was struggling against his binds, his head trying to rise from the table to see what was happening. ‘Jacob…please, loosen these straps and let’s talk. Let’s sort this out, you and me.’

  ‘You and me and him, I think, pig.’ Silence reached up and pushed his hood back from his head. ‘That is why you are here, isn’t it, Milo? For this great sack of shit?’ He waved the knife towards the table behind him and then wiped the blade down one sleeve. ‘Or maybe it is both of us you have come for? Is that it, dear old friend? Is it fate, Milo? Is it fate that brought us together again after all this time?’

  ‘Milo Singer is dead!’ Thinwater shouted up to the ceiling. ‘He was buried at Bleeker Hill. I told you! Now stop this, Jacob. Stop this and untie me!’

  ‘Vengeance,’ Silence said to Singer. ‘I understand. Of course I do, dear friend. The simple pleasure of watching the life drift out of those that we despise with a passion so strong it burns. Feeling the hands close around the throat, the bullet leave the gun or the knife push down deep, those are moments worth clinging on for in this grubby, fag end of a world. Vengeance is probably the only pure thing left in this country. Besides, what else does a dead man have left but vengeance?’

  ‘Dead?’ Singer drawled slowly. ‘Surely more alive than you, Jacob.’

  ‘What? What in God’s name was that?’ Thinwater whined. ‘What is that? Who is there with you, Jacob? Enough of this! Enough!’

  ‘I am more alive in death than either of you could ever be in life,’ Singer seethed.

  For a moment Silence said nothing, his forehead creasing slightly as he nibbled at his bottom lip and seemed to be thinking over what had been said to him. Then, with a long sigh, he turned back into the cell and drew up alongside Audley Thinwater. ‘Yeah, you’re probably right, Milo,’ he said calmly, and then plunged the knife through the side of Thinwater’s neck.

  The scream that blasted out of the small boy was raw and ferocious, and so loud, trapped in the cell, that the very floor itself seemed to shake. When Sam came at him, springing up off his feet like a wild animal pouncing on its prey, Silence had already spun back to the door and was ready for him.

  12

  The kitchen was a narrow rectangular room with a long metal prep table running down the centre. Cupboards lined the top of the walls, broken doors revealing rotten food, clumsy stacks of plates and bowls and a couple of over-fed, lumbering rats. Larger cupboards ran under work surfaces on each side; feeble, food-stained doors peppered with gnawed holes, suggested more rats beyond. To the right of the entrance was a sink that was coming away from the wall, and to the left a huge upright freezer. More rats were scuttling along the floor, breaking away from her purposeful stride, and Blarney was off after them, pouncing and growling, and chasing them back and forth, barging his way into the lower cupboards, with all the stealth of an elephant. Mia paid it no mind. She carried on across the kitchens until she found what she wanted.

  The dumb waiter was accessed by a tall door in two parts that slid open in the middle and rolled all the way up to the ceiling and down to the floor. Inside the wall the chute that fed down to The Hole was narrow, the small metal tray that once carried food back and forth, now dangling precariously from one end of a crude rope pulley system. Mia took the other end of the rope in her left hand, hoping to use it to winch herself down, and gave it a hard tug. The rope snapped free of the pulley, flopped out of her hand and disappeared down into the chute.

  ‘Of course,’ Mia said to herself, and then, with barely a pause, shuffled into the chute, one foot against the wall as the other rested on the edge of the kitchen floor. ‘Blarney…stay!’ Her dog wasn’t listening. More rats had scuttled out onto the floor now and Blarney was frantically dancing around the prep table trying to grab them. ‘Blarney!’ A ginger rump skirted past her leg as he moved around for another assault on the steadily moving, slowly blackening floor. ‘Stay!’

  Mia pushed her back against the main wall of the chute and slowly shuffled herself down, planting her feet either side of the door, her knees pushing up to her chest. As the rectangle of light above her slowly began to dwindle to the sounds of her ham-fisted dog, the heat inside the chute felt immense; a smearing, sticky wave of warmth, that glued her clothes to her skin and washed her face with sweat. She tried to crane down to one side, to look for the next hatch but all she saw was the predictable, seemingly ever-present gloom, welcoming her in. Inch by inch she wriggled down into the chute, her boots shuffling against the wall as her back pushed down against the uneven, brickwork. She heard the back of her shirt tear, felt the rough end of a jagged brick scratch her skin, but pushed on past, not allowing herself a moment to think, afraid of what consideration would make her do.

  When the rat screamed it was magnified horrifically inside the chute. A moment later she heard a cupboard door clatter to the ground and then Blarney was in a manic frenzy, his throaty warble in full force, and in her mind’s eye she could see her dog barging himself crudely into one of the cupboards, could see the sea of rats pouring out across the floor, scrabbling every which way in panic whilst this great ginger lump pranced and danced at them, going in for the kill.

  The light in the open door of the chute had drawn out completely when the first rat dropped into her lap.

  ‘Blarney!’

  A second rat suddenly landed on her face, and then a third on her lap again. As a giant, leathery tail ran across her forehead, and a fourth rat dropped on her chest, her boots momentarily lost their footing and her knees lurched forward and hit the wall. With no space afforded her to shuffle her feet back up, Mia found herself stuck with no way to carry on down the chute except pulling her knees away and letting herself fall. Her hands went to the walls, playing along the uneven brickwork, trying to find something to hold on to, but it merely started crumbling in her fingers. With a weary sigh, and an idle swipe at one particularly over-friendly rat, Mia shifted her knees down and let herself drop.

  Something crunched under her boots as she landed, but she had no time to dwell on it, nor the pain that flared through her right leg and into her hip. Still, the rats came from up above, one gentle thud after another as they landed on her head and the back of her neck, and yet even more started climbing down the walls, or slipped past her altogether, landing in a moving carpet around her boots. Up above she could hear Blarney barking, and she knew he was looking for her now, that he was pacing back and forth, fretting and fussing, and then when the howl came she wanted to scream to him and tell him it was all okay, but there were two rats crawling across her face, and her mouth was staying firmly shut.

  Mia couldn’t see the second hatch from her standing position, but the toe of one boot found the gap between the two bits of wood easily enough. She pushed against the slit, wriggling one boot into the opening, and slowly she started pushing the two doors apart. Instantly she felt the rats around her boots dispersing as they scurried out into The Hole, and then, bit-by-bit, her boots were following them out. The only way to do it was to push her feet through the open door of the hatch whilst slowly sinking to a seated position in the chute. Once on the ground she could then shuffle herself out, legs first. If she were given the chance.

  ‘Come on in, Mia,’ the voice snarled from somewhere just beyond her, and then strong hands found her ankles and Mia was yanked down and then dragged out of the chute, along a parting flow of rats and a long smear of someone else’s
blood.

  13

  Jacob Silence’s bloodied face gazed down, devoid of expression. It was the first time she had really seen him, this presence that had moved between them this past day, this man that had moved through her…and yet to Mia he was a disappointment. He should have looked scary, foreboding and threatening, but he didn’t. Not then. He just looked old. Old and worn out. His shield of a coat now discarded in a tatty heap, his face and body were there for scrutiny; those thin arms, veiny and pale, that long face with the chin that jutted out, cold eyes that could see so much but now seemed to have seen it all.

  ‘You’re trouble, girl. I should have killed you when I had the chance.’

  ‘People die around me,’ Mia said, propping herself up on her elbows. ‘Sorry about that.’

  She saw the knife in his right hand but had no time to react. Instantly a shadow grew up the wall behind him, cresting the ceiling like a giant cloud, and then Silence was pushed off his feet and launched across the room. Sam was on him, and the blows he unleashed were thunderous.

  ‘Sam!’ Mia tried to push off the floor but her hands slipped in the blood pool around her and she managed only to flip over to her side. Little bloody paw prints zigzagged away from her in every direction, and even more rats were coming in behind her from the chute. One rat ran up her back and across her outstretched arm, using it as a bridge over the blood. She followed it off her hand and saw it bustle away, turning out of sight next to a large set of discarded keys. Up above Mia could hear Blarney howling again, and her heart sank. Get up. Get up! Mia flopped over onto her front and wearily scrabbled up to her knees. And do what, exactly?

  Sam clung onto Silence’s back, raining punches to his face. The tall, skeletal killer swung around and tried to launch Sam into the wall but the boy held on, hands now working down to Silence’s throat. Once more Silence turned and this time he jumped back against the wall, slamming Sam against the brickwork. The knife swung up behind him and then slashed at the air just above Sam’s head, scraping against the door to his old cell. Bringing his arm back to his side, the knife turned in his hand and this time Silence shoved it upwards, hard, and buried it into Sam’s right arm. The scream that blasted out through that cold, white, circular room belonged to Milo Singer alone. Pulling the knife free, Silence shrugged Sam off him and then pivoted around nimbly, ready to come in for another attack. A double punch met him, a right fist into his gut as the left followed in across his face. Silence stumbled backwards, and fell into the open doorway of his cell.