Darkshines Seven

by Russell Mardell

  Mia took her chance, and plucked the pistol from her belt. ‘Sam!’ She stepped forward and aimed the gun at Silence, who was now dragging himself up again, using the table where Audley Thinwater still lay, for support. ‘You can hear me, Sam! You are there! I know you are. Fight it!’

  The thing that looked like Sam sprang forward off the ground and shoulder charged her out of the way. Squatting on the floor in front of her, arms wrapped over his chest as if hugging himself, Sam’s face suddenly flared a deep crimson, as his eyes rolled up again to nothing. The face Mia knew was changing right in front of her; Sam’s cheeks were falling in on themselves just as his neck was starting to bulge, his jaw seemed to be growing, threatening to get so prominent it would start to rip through his skin, even his forehead seemed to enlarge momentarily, stretching upwards, pushing that mop of sweat-stained, straw coloured hair back over his head. Milo Singer wasn’t just inside him, he looked like he was trying to come through him. Sam’s mouth curled upwards and his teeth bared, bloody and seemingly free of gums, and the voice that came spat venom with every word. ‘Get away from him, bitch! He is mine!’

  The knife slashed at his cheek as soon as his head turned back to the cell door.

  ‘You will not have me! You are not my fate, Milo! I will not die here again!’ Jacob Silence lunged forward and fell on top of Sam, the knife coming down again towards the young boy’s distorted face. Hands found Silence’s wrist and held on, moving him off balance, just as a knee jerked up under his ribs, winding him. Sam rolled Silence over and straddled him. The knife was between them, held firm in Silence’s grip despite the pressure at his wrist. ‘You were always too belligerent for your own good, Milo. You never knew when the battle was lost.’ Silence turned his hand, fighting Sam’s strength, and moved the knife flat, the blood splattered metal just a few inches from Sam’s neck. ‘You always were more stupid than the rest of us!’

  Sam bent his head and then opened his mouth wide before the flattened knife. With another bloody grin he bit down on the blade. Silence’s hand tensed on the hilt, bony knuckles turning even paler, as he tried to force it forward, but the knife wouldn’t move from the vice like grip that held it in place. Gritting his own teeth as he summoned up the last reserves of his dwindling strength, Silence gave one last push, just as the handle snapped off in his hand. Sam rocked back and spat the blade across the floor. ‘And you were always weaker!’ The boy fell forward, child’s hands tightening around the skin of his enemy’s throat, and then hungrily sank his teeth into the skin below Silence’s left eye.

  When Mia came again at that grotesque version of the young boy who had saved her life only a few hours ago, she did it through a blind rage. She called his name, imploring him to hear, and then was lifted off her feet by a casual swipe of the arm. Mia tumbled headfirst into Silence’s old cell, her wounded arm striking the edge of the table where Audley Thinwater lay.

  ‘Leave him!’ She rolled disorientated onto her side and repeated her plea to the streaks of blood across the floor, her mind and body feeling as if they were moving in separate directions.

  ‘The girl that keeps coming back! Will I ever be free of you, child?’ Singer’s words seemed to be mumbled, distorted, and then Mia realised, with a steady churn of her stomach, that Sam’s mouth was still buried in Silence’s face. ‘It is you that is killing him, child. You.’ There were horrific slurping sounds between the words and the gentle ripping of flesh. ‘From the first moment you set eyes on him you were killing him. You were killing all of them.’

  ‘Please…’ the word was a weak whisper. ‘Take me, Singer. Leave…Sam…just…’ Mia clambered clumsily onto all fours and looked back to the cell door. Sam was standing now, that sweat-drenched hair of straw plastered to his skull like a helmet. Blood ran in smears and flecks across his jawline, and dribbled over his lips. With his right arm extended high above his head, he held firm to Jacob Silence’s limp costume of bones. ‘You’ve got what you wanted, Singer. Haven’t you? This…isn’t all of this…isn’t this what we were for? Enough. Please, enough, Singer.’

  Sam tilted his head.

  Shoot me. Shoot me, Mia!

  It was Sam. His pleas washed through her mind. ‘Sam?’

  Shoot me!

  ‘Stop this, Singer! Stop torturing him!’

  Shoot me, Mia!

  No! Don’t so this! Don’t do this to me!

  With an idle, almost nonchalant, swing of the arm, Sam launched Jacob Silence into the cell, pitching him over Mia with such force, that when he connected with the wall, it sounded to Mia like bone china smashing into a thousand pieces.

  Kill me, Mia! Shoot me!

  Both Sam’s arms were raised at his side now, welcoming Mia to him, inviting her.

  ‘Don’t do this to me!’

  Mia’s heart lurched. The cell door, the boy standing there, offering himself to her, both seemed to blur and shimmer together in her vision. She took the pistol into a hand that felt like it was made of jelly. Slowly she stood on cotton wool legs and then stumbled forward. The boy faded out and then flickered back like a flame not quite extinguished.

  ‘Stop…’ she said to no one, to anyone, and then swayed on her feet.

  She held a hand to her side to steady herself and then realised with disgust that she had planted it on Audley Thinwater’s face. She felt as if she were being held together by old glue and that at any moment she would break and then she would never be able to get up again. She moved the pistol up no more than an inch before it slipped free and clattered to the ground.

  ‘What good can you possibly be in this world any more, Mia?’ She heard laughter from all sides of the cell. The voice seemed to be creeping around her like mist. ‘Goodness doesn’t belong here.’ The shape in the door was shifting, rocking from side to side, and Mia was falling forward, her hands out before her, combing through air, looking for support, yet finding a great, thick nothing. ‘You cling to a dead morality like a drowning man holding a lifebelt.’ Coldness suddenly blasted through her, screamed around her like a howling gale, a thousand voices whispering her name under great peels of laughter that followed her down into the blackness. ‘Yet you are in the middle of the ocean, girl.’

  Mia felt Sam’s arms, and then felt no more.

  14

  ‘Mia?’

  He had dragged her almost to the metal gate of The Hole before she stirred against him. Her words were gibberish but it was the nicest sound Sam could remember. Almost instantly he heard another sound that was just as wonderful. A familiar throaty warble was coming from just behind them, as were great blasts of bad breath. Mia’s left hand tightened against his chest, a feeble fist clutching at his shirt.

  ‘It’s okay, Mia.’

  Sam shuffled up against the metal bars, the keys jangling against Jacob Silence’s broken knife blade in his lap. A wet nose prodded his arm as a paw crept in between the bars, searching for Mia.

  ‘Help me!’ the voice called from the other end of The Hole.

  It was the fifth such cry Sam had heard, and his response now was the same as it had been on the first. Silence. He gazed off dreamily at the cells in the circular room, and once again the figure standing there in the centre made him want to laugh. He was grotesquely comical and reminded Sam of an old action figure he had found on one his food runs. Someone – some kid, no doubt, with a latent taste for violence – had bent the plastic limbs out of joint, moving them into impossible angles – arms bent back, legs turned fully around so the feet faced the other way – and that was exactly how Jacob Silence looked now.

  ‘Help me!’ he pleaded once more as huge eyes caught Sam staring. At that very moment, his tall, skeletal body suddenly jerked backwards, and then his torso whipped around sharply to one side until something snapped. Jacob Silence’s ear-piercing scream rang out like the howl of a wolf, echoing up to them at the gate, magnified, distorted, and glorious.

  For Sam, vengeance was the most wondrous sound of all.

  THE C
OAST

  1

  They had cleared the city and were already on the road to the coast when the banging started from the back of the ambulance. All things considered, Tommy thought that wasn’t too bad. He had expected one of them – most likely Hector – to cotton on to what was happening a lot earlier. As it was they had now driven far enough away from City 17 for any one to do anything about it, even if any of these strangers had been mad enough to try. The petrol gauge was pushing the red as Tommy moved them out onto the main A-road and began gently traversing the damaged tarmac, dodging the blackened husks of vehicles that loomed at them out of the dark.

  ‘What the hell is going on?’ It was Hector who was doing the banging, just as he suspected. ‘Bergan? Pull over now! Pull over!’

  Realising that the obstacle course of the road was slowing them to such a crawl that, should he have a mind to, Hector could actually jump out of the back and run up to the driver’s door, Tommy pulled the ambulance over into a lay-by, cut the engine and waited for the shouts and screams that he had been bracing himself for ever since he had floored the accelerator.

  Hector was at the driver’s door within seconds, yanking it open and lunging for him. ‘What the hell are you doing, Bergan? Where are you taking us?’

  ‘I was saving your life, not that you’d seem to notice. Or care.’ Tommy slid the seatbelt free and brushed Hector’s hands away as he climbed down onto the road. Callie was moving to them now, Albie just behind. ‘I’m taking us to Storm Tail.’

  Albie limped forward. Facing across the empty seats at the front of the ambulance, Albie froze, her hands on the door.

  ‘Let me explain,’ Tommy said. ‘You don’t understand.’

  Albie swung around to Tommy and drew the back of her right hand hard across his face. Tommy then took her fisted left hand square on the nose. Albie was on him in a frantic, furious attack, her hands clawing at his shirt as she pushed him down to the ground. ‘You son of bitch! You evil son of a bitch! What have you done! What have you done to my boy? Where have you left my Sam?’ It was Callie that finally wrestled Albie away.

  ‘Crazy mad woman, what the hell are you doing? Jesus, I think you’ve bust my nose!’ Tommy sat up drunkenly, and then a muddy, black loafer was on his chest, pushing him back down to the tarmac. Hector was standing over him.

  ‘You left them at Darkshines?’

  ‘Why did you leave him? Why did you leave Sam?’ Albie’s voice wavered between fear and the promise of more violence. She seemed as likely to beat Tommy to a pulp as break down in tears.

  Tommy shoved Hector’s foot from his chest but didn’t attempt sitting up again. ‘He’s not your boy any more, darling.’

  ‘What is that supposed to mean?’ Callie asked, as she maneuvered Albie back to the open door. ‘What do you mean he’s not her boy?’

  ‘What have you done to him, Party filth?’ Hector snapped.

  ‘I haven’t done anything,’ Tommy cut back, quickly. He had hoped the carefully drawn out emphasis would tell the tale for him to save him from speaking the words. Albie and Callie were motionless shapes in the open door. Hector too, not so far off the statuesque shape of the trees that lined the road behind him, with that stupid, bushy hair, didn’t seem to be moving. As it was though, none of them seemed to have grasped the truth.

  ‘Then who has? Mia? What did she…’

  ‘It was him you stupid people…that thing…’ Tommy saw that horrific looking face in his mind, staring at him, looking through him, seeming to be both devoid of expression and yet filled with a hundred corrupted horrors. Tommy shifted on the tarmac, propping himself up on his elbows. Suddenly the quietness that seemed to encase them inside the night wasn’t as comforting as it had been. ‘Milo Singer found a new vessel, I guess.’

  ‘No,’ Albie said flatly, firmly.

  ‘I know what I saw. I know what I heard. If we had stayed there it would have killed us. That was what it said. That was what your precious little Sam told me. I saved your life. All of you.’

  ‘By sacrificing him?’ Callie said matter-of-factly, and then followed the words with a light whistle.

  ‘Yeah, what of it? You were the one back at the campsite calling him all manner of names. You were the one that refused to be near him, said he was a murderer. Now you’re weeping over it? A little late to act like you care, Callie.’

  ‘Don’t speak to my sister like that, scumbag.’

  ‘He’s right,’ Albie said quietly, stepping forward and drawing up alongside Hector. ‘There’s no need for any of you to care. He’s my boy, my responsibility. He’s nothing to any of you. Nor do I want him to be. Tell me everything, Tommy.’

  As Tommy slowly recounted the events just south of Darkshines, he thought he saw tears glistening on Albie’s cheeks. When he had finished and that familiar silence returned he could feel tears welling in his own eyes. ‘I’m sorry. But I had no choice.’

  Albie held a hand out to him. ‘Keys.’

  ‘You can’t be serious?’

  ‘Give me the keys, Tommy.’

  ‘Albie…’ Hector laid a hand on her arm and squeezed lightly, ‘please think about this. I know how you feel…’

  ‘But you don’t though, do you? He’s mine, Hector. He’s my boy.’

  ‘Well you’re better off finding a new set of wheels, if you’re intent on being that damn crazy. We were down to fumes anyway.’

  ‘You can’t go back there, Albie.’

  ‘He needs me, Hector. It’s what I do.’ She shoved his hand from her. ‘It’s why I am.’ Albie turned and began to trudge back along the road. She was only a few yards past the ambulance when Callie’s words stopped her dead.

  ‘He doesn’t need you.’

  ‘Callie, don’t…’ It was meant to be a scold to his sister, harsh words to pull her up on her insensitivity, but the feeling wasn’t there for Hector. He knew she was right.

  ‘Maybe I need him then,’ Albie said and then took another couple of limps forward. ‘This is none of your business.’

  ‘He’s a cold-blooded killer, Albie. Your boy is all grown up.’

  ‘Callie!’ Hector joined his sister at the open door and thumped her on the arm.

  Callie replied with a punch of her own, twice as hard, and her brother scuttled away.

  ‘It wasn’t him that killed that man. It makes sense now after what Tommy has told us. Don’t you see?’ Albie came to a limping stop, the black outline of her body just there to see in the dark, against an upturned caravan. ‘It wasn’t him!’

  ‘Wasn’t it?’

  Slowly the black shape against the white of the caravan started shrinking, almost folding in on itself, as if the ground was sucking it in through the tarmac. Albie slumped to her knees under the weight of too much truth, with an audible, almost relieved, sigh, and then broke into great racking sobs.

  ‘Callie?’ Hector nodded over to where Albie was and smiled feebly. Callie shot her brother a look of contempt and then nodded to her herself, her arms crossed tightly over her chest.

  ‘She doesn’t need your comfort, she needs your help,’ Tommy said from the ground.

  ‘Piss off, Party man.’

  ‘Take her to Storm Tail, that’s what we need to do.’

  ‘Shut up!’ Hector said, walking over to Albie. ‘We don’t need to do anything.’

  ‘If the kid and Mia are alive they will be going to Storm Tail because that’s where they think we are going. You want to see either of them again, that’s the only place to do it. She ever makes it back to City 17 she will either pass them going the other way or get herself killed. You know it, she knows it.’

  ‘I know you’re a pathetic sack of shit and a coward, that’s what I know,’ Hector shouted over his shoulder as he drew up over Albie.

  ‘You’ve got no idea what I’ve done for you people!’ Tommy shouted back.

  ‘Yeah, you’re right. I don’t.’

  ‘No, no Hector. He’s right.’ Moist eyes were sparkling up at Hector
from the ground as a hand fumbled at one of his own. ‘Help me up.’ Albie wiped a snotty nose down a sleeve and then laughed. ‘I guess we don’t do manners any more, right?’

  ‘Some of us never did,’ Hector said with a smile.

  Albie limped forward, leaning into Hector for support, furiously wiping at her eyes with the palm of a hand. ‘Sam is still alive, they both are.’

  ‘How do you know that?’ Callie asked.

  ‘I don’t. But what do you want me to believe? If I can’t believe that then you might as well leave me here. Tommy is right. I’m going to Storm Tail.’ The weak voice of just a few minutes ago had found some steel, the red raw eyes, some fire. ‘Now are you going to come with me, Callie? You and Hector? I can’t deny I need your help, but I could also do with the company. What do you say?’

  Brother and sister exchanged looks and shrugs.

  ‘Got nowhere else to go, right now,’ Hector said.

  ‘Besides,’ Callie chipped in, ‘if you think you want my brother’s company, you really do need my help.’

  ‘I will find us another car,’ Tommy said, getting to his feet. ‘There’s bound to be something here.’