Immortal Make

by Sean Cunningham

  Fiona recalled the woman in the blue cardigan at the supermarket. She remembered the sense of hollowness. “He takes a part of them?”

  A Piccadilly Line train eased up alongside the platform. Its doors slid open and most of the people waiting tried to jam themselves onto the already crowded train.

  “Not boarding?” Sorcha asked.

  “The District Line trains are always less crowded,” Fiona said. “Come on. Explain what Lawrence did to that woman.”

  “He steals their dreams,” Sorcha said. “Or rather, he inhabits them. He spreads himself from his shell like–” Sorcha paused. Her thinking face, if that’s what it was, was no different to every other expression she wore. “Like those nautilus creatures in the ocean. He reaches out from his shell and spreads his tentacles into other people. They begin to dream of a man with no face, more and more, and he takes their minds, piece by piece. The woman you saw has almost nothing left. She moves through her days and nights out of habit now, nothing more.”

  Fiona shivered. It matched the feeling she’d received from the woman. She tried to imagine it: food with no taste, sunlight with no warmth. “So he’s a psychic vampire. Why should I be pleased to be threatened with that?”

  “That isn’t what I meant.”

  A District Line train arrived. It was taller and squarer in shape than the low, round Piccadilly trains and since the previous stop back up the line was the terminus, Fiona was usually able to find a seat.

  Fiona gestured towards the door as it slid open. “Coming for a train ride?”

  “No.”

  “Suit yourself.” She stepped up into the carriage. Unlike on most of the other Underground lines, the carriages were not separated by doors. They were joined by the overlapping plates of the floors and ceilings. The flexible material that made up either wall accordioned in and out as the train took bends. When the cars were lined up straight, she could see all the way from the front to the back, if it wasn’t crowded. The seats all faced inwards. Most were taken, but as usual a few were free. She stood in front of a man in a black suit who read from a tablet computer and pretended he wasn’t aware of her. After less than ten seconds under her glare, he hunched his shoulders and took his briefcase off the seat beside him.

  Sorcha still stood on the platform when Fiona peered out through the window. She watched Sorcha slide away as the train pulled out of the station. Fiona knew the distance between them meant nothing, but she felt better for it anyway.

  “This is a District Line service to Upminster,” a cool woman’s voice said over the automated intercom. “The next stop is Acton Town.”

  Directly opposite Fiona sat a woman reading from her phone. As the train picked up speed, the woman lifted her gaze to Fiona.

  A rolling feeling struck Fiona’s stomach. It was the same unoccupied gaze that she’d seen on the woman in the supermarket. A person slowly eaten out from the inside, until only a dried-out husk remained.

  One easily controlled.

  The woman stood up and balanced on her heels in the gently rocking train. She took a step towards Fiona and raised both her arms.

  Fiona saw Dale or Rick again, vanishing into her shadow and never coming out.

  She leapt out of her seat and hurried down the carriage, grabbing the rails to keep her balance. The hollow woman turned, stumbled, fell against the passenger who’d been sitting beside her. He was overweight, his neck bulging out of his business shirt collar.

  The woman straightened. Fiona kept her focus on her. She wasn’t moving fast. All Fiona had to do was keep ahead of her until the next stop. Then she didn’t have to die. She could go back to whatever life she had left.

  But then the overweight man stood up behind the woman and turned to face her as well.

  Sorcha, Fiona thought with a snarl. Sorcha had told Lawrence Moth her routine. One of his victims could have been a coincidence, but not two.

  She bumped into someone as she backed up. She had time to think, But everyone was sitting down.

  An arm in an orange parka sleeve came round her throat.

  She tried to pull forward, but the arm had her. Then a black hand rose up in front of her face, grabbed the arm and wrenched it free with a crackle of bone.

  “Don’t hurt them!” She stomped on her shadow. “Don’t hurt them, you bloody thing.”

  The man in the orange parka fell onto one of the seated passengers. Fiona sprang past him. Backing away from him would mean heading towards the first two. Even with his forearm bent at a sharp angle and blood spreading fast through his sleeve, the man in the parka tried to reach her with his good arm.

  She glanced out the window. The journey between Ealing Common and Acton Town was short. The train was on the downward slope to the station, but even as she began to hope it drew to a halt.

  “Ladies and gentlemen, I apologise for the delay,” the driver said over the intercom, sounding bored as he repeated words he’d said many times before. “We’re being held at a red signal while a Piccadilly Line train from Heathrow goes in front of us. We’ll be on the move shortly.”

  “Bloody Heathrow trains,” Fiona said. The three hollow people lurched after her while everyone else on the train watched, too stunned to do anything, or pretending not to see.

  Fiona backed over the join between the carriages, careful not to step on the place where the shifting metal floor plates met. If she could just stay ahead of Lawrence Moth’s victims for long enough. If there was just enough train left behind her. She glanced over her shoulder.

  An Asian woman in a white face mask stood up from the next bank of seats. When she turned her dark eyes on Fiona, they were empty pits.

  The man in the parka with the bloody arm was almost within reach. Fiona judged the masked woman to be as light as she was. She set her jaw and ran into the woman shoulder-first. The woman bounced off Fiona and sprawled back across a young woman with short blonde hair who clutched a small suitcase against her shins.

  But before Fiona could run past, the masked woman lunged and wrapped her arms around Fiona’s legs.

  Fiona fell to her knees. “No! Get off before–”

  Two black arms unfolded from her shadow like spider legs. They gripped the woman by the arms and wrenched her off. Fiona heard two distinct snaps of bone as her arms folded like they were made of cardboard, one right after the other, faster than the second hand of a clock.

  Fiona kicked and scrambled to her feet. She blinked away tears. Refused to think about that poor woman waking up in a hospital with broken arms.

  The train lurched and started moving. Fiona lost her balance and struck a metal pole.

  “Sorry for the delay, ladies and gentlemen,” said the driver over the intercom. “We now have a green signal.”

  Fiona used the pole to swing around. The woman with the face mask was trying to stand up, while an Asian man her age wailed and fluttered around her. Horrified passengers watched from the seats, some frozen in place, others half out of their chairs, pressing themselves away.

  The man in the parka stomped across the join between carriages. Fiona backed away. The carriage darkened as the train crawled beneath the walkway that connected Acton Town’s platforms.

  They were almost there. If she could get off the train, she could get away without hurting anyone else.

  Unless there were more of them on the platform.

  She glanced behind her. A wall – the door to the driver’s cabin, surely locked. There was nowhere else to run. The man in the parka tripped on the suitcase clutched by the woman with short blonde hair. His shattered arm left him floundering on the floor, but the woman who had first attacked her stepped over him and came on towards Fiona. The big man in the suit was right on her heels.

  The train stopped. The trilling door alarm sounded and the doors sprang open.

  “This is Acton Town,” said the automated woman’s voice. “Change here for the Piccadilly Line. This is a District Line service to Upminster.”

  Fiona shov
ed her way through the passengers waiting to board the train. The cold morning air was a relief – somehow the train had felt hot. She backed across the platform. A woman in high heels tottered past her, rushing towards the Piccadilly Line train waiting across from Fiona’s train.

  Someone finally pulled the alarm lever on Fiona’s train.

  Through the fogged window of the District Line train, she could see the woman and the overweight man in the suit. They blinked around them, as though an elevator had dropped them on the wrong floor. A man’s voice, rough with pain, swore with every breath and Fiona assumed the man in the parka was feeling the damage to his arm.

  Lawrence Moth had released his slaves.

  Fiona covered her face in her hands. She felt like collapsing. Instead she thought, I am going to find a way to make you pay for this, Sorcha. A really unpleasant way.

  “Restraint?” she said to her shadow. Her voice was not quite steady. “Reasonable force? Any of these ideas ringing a bell?”

  The monster in her shadow made no response. It never did.

  And then it occurred to her that she still had to get to work. Her train wasn’t going anywhere for a while, but a Piccadilly Line train was about to leave from the other platform.

  It was packed with people.

  Fiona eyed the commuters standing face-to-armpit in the car.

  She tried to decide what to do.

  Chapter 16 – Fiona

  The doorbell rang. Fiona padded downstairs on her stockinged feet to find Julian standing in the front yard with his hands tucked into his armpits. He wore a pull-over and his satchel hung from his shoulder.

  “Hi. May I come in?”

  Fiona stepped aside. Julian didn’t appear to notice the wrath in her eyes. He poked his head into the living room. “Is anyone else home?”

  “No.”

  She drew in a breath. She had a lot to say to him. For leaving her helpless, defended only by a monster with no boundaries, while Sorcha toyed with her and Lawrence Moth pursued her. For thinking she couldn’t handle the secret of the crystal skeleton in Norway.

  Fiona still heard the snap of bones every time she closed her eyes.

  “All right then,” he said. “Shall we go to your room like last time?”

  Fiona paused. “Last time?”

  He still seemed oblivious to her mood. “Yes. The last time we did anything with magic. Anywhere’s fine, really. You do have that big room out the back now, if you’d rather go there.”

  Fiona felt derailed. “Magic?” She said it like she’d never heard of it before and flushed at how stupid she sounded.

  “I said I’d think about it,” Julian said. “And I have. Good thing you’re here tonight, actually. Rob and I are off to Iceland for the weekend. This is our last chance before next week.”

  She stared at him. “You’re here to teach me magic?”

  “Well yes. Unless you’ve changed your mind?”

  She pivoted away from him towards the stairs, all her cutting remarks and accusations fluttering out of her mind. “My room, then. I’d rather not have my mother come home to find me levitating the sofas.”

  “I doubt we’ll get to that tonight, but I’ll keep that in mind for the future,” he said, following her up the stairs.

  You had him wrong the whole time, the voice in her mind chuckled.

  She tapped her fist on the bannister and told herself not to take damned Julian’s side.

  Once in her room, a new worry came to her. She didn’t know what Julian intended and she had begun to think magic was more dangerous than anyone had let on before now.

  Were two evil wizards not a big enough hint? the voice in her mind asked.

  Julian pulled his satchel strap over his head. “On your bed or on the floor?”

  She squashed an incredulous look. “The floor.”

  He sat cross-legged on her carpet and pulled a notepad from his satchel.

  “Now wait a minute,” Fiona said. She’d seen that pad before. “Do you mean for us to go into a dream? Because that’s – that’s not always safe.”

  He nodded without looking up as he flipped through the notepad. “I know. Don’t worry, I know what I’m doing.”

  Fiona held her temper. As she sat cross-legged in front of him, she said, “If we get chased around by a murderous ten thousand year-old dream monster, just to pick a hypothetical example, it’s your fault.”

  He snorted. “That sounds like a regular night out for Rob and I.” He held the pad out to her. The page he’d turned to was covered with an intricate circular design, a mandala of loops and whorls that seemed fluid, like the ink was still wet and held in place only by surface tension.

  Frowning, she thought of the void that was Lawrence Moth’s face. She reached out and took the pad. The design tugged at her thoughts. She tingled inside, like she did when linked with Tamara and her friends.

  “It’s definitely safe in there?” she asked.

  “I said don’t worry,” he replied, holding out his hand.

  Fiona scowled, grabbed his hand and pulled them both into the dream.

  She and Julian still sat facing each other. Fiona twisted around to take in their surroundings. “Are we inside a ping-pong ball?”

  The room, if it was that, was white and round and lit as though by sunlight beyond its pearly surface. It was large enough that the floor barely sloped where they sat at the bottom.

  “You need a distraction-free environment,” Julian said. “Now, imagine an everyday object in your hand.”

  “What kind of object?” She was dressed in her coat and boots, just as she always was in dreams. Julian wore a dark blue uniform, a variation of one she’d seen him wear in another dream. He was not armed, which was either a good sign or a thing she guessed would prove to be a mistake if Lawrence Moth found them.

  “Anything. As long as you can hold it in your hand.”

  She didn’t like his dismissive tone. “How about a ping-pong ball?”

  “Best not,” he said. “Now that you’ve associated our environment with a ping-pong ball, the steadiness of your hand would become terribly important. Try an apple.”

  Her mind tried to wrap itself around the idea of sitting inside an object she was at the same time holding in her hand. She shrugged it off as dream logic. With a look that dared Julian to comment, she murmured, “Apple.”

  A red, lopsided apple appeared in her hand. She concentrated enough to make sure it didn’t change or vanish. She didn’t want Julian to see any lack of control from her, not now that he had actually deigned to help her.

  “Good,” he said. “Now repeat after me.” He spoke a single word.

  “What was that? I didn’t catch it.”

  He repeated it.

  She shook her head. “Why are you mumbling?”

  “I’m not mumbling, you’re not concentrating. Listen.” He spoke again.

  Fiona scowled. “Is that even the same word? You’re speaking gibberish.”

  “No,” he snapped, “you’re not concentrating.” He spoke again.

  She bristled. “You’re not–”

  “Concentrate.” He spoke again.

  The knuckles of the hand that held the apple turned white. She was in physical and mental danger and he wanted to play some stupid game with her.

  He said the word again.

  She cocked her head. It had come close to making sense that time. Her eyes unfocused as she tried to assemble it from the memory of the sound.

  He spoke again.

  Almost. As though he’d skipped some of the word’s consonants, or like a background hum drowned out some of the word’s syllables.

  Julian spoke again.

  Fiona pursed her lips. Her mouth and tongue shaped what she thought was the first part of it.

  Julian spoke again.

  She thought she had it. Fiona tried to repeat the word, but her tongue tripped over it. She shook her head and tried again.

  Julian spoke the word.

&n
bsp; Fiona concentrated, sounding out the syllables one-by-one. The word kept trying to strum a sour note on her vocal chords, to twist in her mouth and come out all different. She got it wrong and tried again.

  Julian spoke.

  She lifted her hands, as though to catch the word in the air. She could feel the shape of the word in her head now, the contours of the concept it represented still forming. Her vocal chords thrummed with it. Her tongue and lips and jaw moved as she enunciated, one sound at a time, the single word from start to finish.

  Every nerve in her body sang. She felt warm in her core, tingly in her fingertips.

  Julian spoke.

  Fiona repeated the word.

  It fell into place in her head. She felt it shift her mind and become part of her. An ur-word. A concept she had never known and yet always known. As though, impossibly, she had forgotten such a perfect and fundamental thing.

  The word meant evert.

  The tingle in her body became a rush.

  She sat bolt upright, astonished. They sat on the carpet in her bedroom. Out of the dream. Awake.

  She stared at Julian. He watched her with a little half-smile on his face. With the first finger of his left hand, he tapped the back of his right.

  Fiona looked down.

  The apple was still in her hand.

  She gasped and it vanished.

  Fiona stared at her hand, where the apple had been.

  The dream apple.

  Some of her usual self-control kicked in before she could start blabbering in astonishment. “That was a word of magic.”

  “Yes,” he said. For some reason, he didn’t say more.

  “A word of magic that means ‘evert the dream’ or ‘bring this back into the waking world.’”

  “Yes,” he said.

  “And saying the word made it happen.”

  “Saying the word flexed the part of you that can make such things happen, yes,” he said.

  He still wore that little half-smile. “I have the feeling you’re waiting for me to say something in particular.”

  His smile widened. “Possibly I was waiting for you to say that. Well done, Fiona.”

  I made an apple, she thought. It wasn’t lighting a candle, but it was magic. It was definitely that.