by Amos Cassidy
It was the dead of night. The streets were silent and almost gloomy. He wove his way through the maze of corridors, glancing at each of the soft lights as he went along. They were designed to look Victorian, a period way back in the day named after a Queen Victoria. Ash had given him a book about stuff from that time. Some of the pages were missing, but he’d got the gist.
“Clay?”
He stopped at the sound of Sarah’s voice.
Sarah was a short, voluptuous brunette, who managed to make Fred salivate every time she graced his presence. She didn’t seem to notice. Her work as head Gardener took all her attention. She worked alongside Simon, Shelter’s Alchemist. They were a relaxed pair, really close, but not a couple. And they were great fun to hang out with—Clay and Blake had done so on many occasions.
“Sarah? What are you doing up?”
“I was just in the greenhouse, you know, having a look.”
Clay sighed. “I’m sorry I haven’t fixed that light yet, but I promise I will.”
“It’s okay.” Her smile was always so warm.
“I will fix it.”
“Is that where you’re going?”
“Yeah.”
“You shouldn’t be so hard on yourself about it.”
Clay shrugged. “I just don’t want it to short out the others.”
“Go to bed, Clay.”
“I can’t.”
Sarah clasped her hands together behind her back. “Look, I know how you’re feeling. I’m one to talk, being up and about like this. But I’ve had an epiphany.”
“You have?”
“Yep, and it’s that I am no use to anyone being knackered tomorrow from lack of sleep.”
“You’re right,” Clay said. “But it’s bugging me no end. I don’t know how to tell Blake.”
“You don’t need to. It’ll be okay. Just a glitch. Listen, I have a little something back in my room that might help. Simon whipped it up from some hops and tea leaves. Come, I’ll give you some.”
Clay was kind of relieved. He would much rather be back in bed, worry free and snuggled up to Blake.
“Thank you,” he said. “That would be great.” It appeared that epiphanies were contagious.
He followed Sarah to her room. As soon as she opened the door, he was hit with the scent of roses. Sarah loved to grow them. Clay had built Sarah her own mini UV light for her room to do so.
Sarah’s room was probably the warmest place in Shelter, matching everything about her. It was all soft minks and pale browns and the lighting inside was never harsh. Clay found the ambience charming.
“Here you go.” Sarah handed him a small flask. “It’s cold, I’m afraid, but it will do the trick regardless. Don’t take it until you’re about to get into bed. It takes barely a minute to kick in.”
“Cool, thanks for the warning.”
Sarah chuckled. “Don’t want to find you sprawled out in the streets, do we?”
“Definitely not.”
“Well, goodnight. Go and sleep. Tomorrow is another day. We both need to stop worrying. That light will be fixed. It’s just being naughty.”
Clay chuckled. “Goodnight, Sarah. Thanks again.”
“See you tomorrow.”
“Yep, see you then.”
Clay paused on his way back to his room.
Something isn’t right.
He looked down at the flask. It would be his saviour. What he really needed was to sleep. Tomorrow was another day, a fresh start. He’d feel better; he was sure of it. A clear head always helped. He’d fix that damn light and help his sister. Everything would be all right.
ASH
We were almost at the Beyond and so far no critters, no problems. But even if we did come across a critter or two, I was certain we could handle it. Until a couple of years ago, we’d faced a bigger threat: Knightmares. Creatures made of black smoke and silver bone. They looked like horses, but were something else entirely, and they were hungry for human flesh. I’m not sure how many human Reapers had been killed or maimed by these creatures. But then one day they had simply vanished.
Tonight, it was as if the Shadowland was holding its breath, waiting for something. The transition between the Cusp and the Beyond was quite obvious. Where there was some anaemic grey light in the Cusp, the Beyond was a veil of inky blackness, ominous and viscous and pretty scary. Bernadette was no longer holding my hand, and I kind of wished she’d take it again, but she’d moved off slightly, searching for a tether for our harnesses. I unclipped mine and moved to help her. We found a bent lamppost. Its light was smashed and its head almost touched the ground.
“This’ll do,” Bernadette said. Her voice sounded shockingly loud in the silence, and I jumped a little before exhaling and wrapping the line closest to the flesh of my harness around the body of the lamppost. I made sure it was tight and then stepped back.
“You ready?” Bernadette asked.
My stomach quivered. “Yeah, let’s do it.”
Bernadette took my hand and I was grateful for the contact. We stared up at the inky blackness, which seemed to shift and reach out to us. The anaemic light withdrew, moving behind us, leaving nothing but shadow, and then we stepped into the Beyond.
For a moment, the darkness was absolute, a physical entity that pressed itself against me, suffocating me. I gasped for breath. If Bernadette hadn’t been holding my hand, I would probably have buckled. I felt light headed and strange, but the steady pressure of her fingers lent me the focus to breathe, steady and even. Two more steps, three more steps, and my eyes began to adjust to the darkness, and then I looked up and knew why.
It hung in the sky, a milky glowing orb so beautiful it stole my breath and made my heart ache.
Bernadette’s soft exhalation told me that she’d spotted it too.
“Is that it? Is that the sun?” I asked.
“No. That’s the moon.”
I didn’t ask how she knew. She was a few years older than me and so she’d had the privilege and the misfortune to know what we were missing.
“It’s so . . . bright.” I couldn’t stop staring at it.
“Ash, this doesn’t look right.” Bernadette’s words pulled my attention back to the dark landscape. Houses stood unlit and silent on a street with tall, sturdy lampposts and even, un-cracked paving. It looked normal, as if the street were merely sleeping, but the more I stared at it, the more wrong it felt. The light from the moon didn’t seem to do anything to dispel the shadows that flowed over the buildings before us. It did nothing to banish the dark pockets that lurked between the houses.
“It’s the Beyond. The rules here are . . . unusual, right?”
“Yeah . . .” She didn’t sound so sure, though. Neither was I. In fact, my gut was doing all kinds of crazy twingy things. My early warning system. Run, Ash, it was saying. This shit was fucked up, but I’d come this far and I was not going anywhere without checking this place out. This was our world and they had stolen it, forbidden us from it. They’d stolen our sun and were holding our moon captive. They’d banished us to beyond the Horizon and taken this place, our place, for themselves. The least they could have done was to leave us the moon. Was this why they’d made a treaty to stop us from venturing farther? They didn’t want us to know that our world was almost intact here, unbroken and ready for habitation. If Blake and the council knew, they would change their minds about everything. Surely they would reconsider venturing forth, offering a new treaty, even fight for what was ours. I’d rather die fighting than curl up and accept death.
“It won’t work,” Bernadette said.
“What?”
“What you’re thinking.”
“You don’t know what I’m thinking.”
I could hear the smile in her voice when she spoke next. “Yeah, I do. You know why? ’Cos it’s the first thing that went through my head. But it won’t work because we have nothing to offer them. They have the power, they have the numbers.”
She was right. We had no
leverage. They didn’t have to give us shit. My chest burned with the injustice of it. I fixed my eyes on the residence in front of us.
“Let’s take a look around, see what goods we can find.” I hoisted my pack higher on my shoulders. If we went back with some loot, maybe we could convince them to send in small teams once a month. If we spread out, if we were careful, then we could live off the goods for a while.
Bernadette followed as I slunk up the path toward the dwelling. Two floors, a low building, a step leading up to the closed front door. I peeked in the windows and saw nothing but darkness.
The door handle turned easily enough, and I pushed open the door and made to step inside, but Bernadette beat me to it. Well, she pushed me out the way, actually, and went in first.
I followed her wide shoulders as she moved cautiously into the hallway. The house smelled fresh as if it had just been cleaned. We ventured farther in, scanning our surroundings: a living area to the left, a kitchen straight ahead and the stairs to the right.
Bernadette moved into the kitchen and I followed. We were both thinking the same thing: food.
The kitchen was a large, homey space. Pans hung from pegs on the wall, knife handles protruded from a wooden holder on the counter. In the moonlight filtering in through the netting at the window, I could see that the place was neat and clean, as if the occupants had just stepped out for a minute. I glanced at Bernadette, who shrugged, her lips turned down. We’d never seen a place like this before. The residences in the Cusp were cracked and broken and raided. This was perfectly intact.
It was creepy.
I reached for a cupboard and pulled it open. “Fuck!”
Bernadette was by my side in a moment. “Shit!”
“Yeah . . .” We stared at the tins of food, neatly stacked, the dried goods slotted in beside them.
I shrugged off my pack and began to load up, my throat tight with emotion. Was every house here filled with food? What else did they have that we didn’t? We were dying and they were hoarding what belonged to us.
Bernadette had moved away. I heard her open the fridge and curse. I didn’t want to see, didn’t need to see. I just listened to her load up.
They had power, how did they have power?
It was a shame that we couldn’t carry more. There was so much. A pantry filled with rice and flour and lentils. My stomach ached with rage for what they were keeping from us.
“Let’s get out of here, Ash. I’ve seen enough.” Bernadette moved toward the door and, after a quick glance around the shadowy kitchen, I followed.
We made it to the front door. Bernadette was reaching for the door knob when the foyer went as dark as pitch. We froze, holding our breath.
Something was outside, blocking the light of the moon.
Something dark, and indistinguishable, and . . . big.
The door knob rattled and I almost lost it.
Bernadette inched backward, her finger to her lips, and jerked her head in the direction of a door set in the side of the stairs. She grabbed my hand and tugged me toward it. Before I had a chance to figure out what she was doing, we were squished into a small room under the stairs that was filled with soft clothes hanging from the wall.
We stood still, barely breathing, and listened as the door opened.
The sound of footsteps filled the foyer, heavy and uneven.
“So?” the voice was gruff.
“I smells them. I still smells them. They’s here.”
“Gunder, we gots to go afore they find us!”
“Nix, I tell ya, they’s here. If we catched ’em, then think what we can get for ’em.”
“Turd and fuck, it’s the keeper. Come on!” Nix said.
The door banged shut and there was silence.
What the hell had that been about? Were they talking about us?
Bernadette opened the door and peeked out. Then she slipped out into the foyer. I followed.
“They could be out there, waiting.” I said.
“I know, but we can’t stay here. If we leg it, maybe we can maybe outrun them.”
I nodded. What choice did we have? If we stayed put they could come back and find us. That thing had smelled us. I just wish I knew what we would be outrunning.
We made it outside, down the path and onto the street before I allowed myself to breathe. There was no one about, and this time, I was grateful for the excessive shadows, which we used for cover, moving closer and closer to the Cusp.
So many neat houses filled with food. My backpack bulged, and I felt a bubble of excitement in my chest as I imagined Blake’s face when he saw our haul. It almost eclipsed the anxiety that simmered in my belly.
Almost there.
I could see the anaemic shimmer ahead that signalled the Cusp. And then my arms broke out in goose bumps, and my scalp began to prickle. I grabbed Bernadette’s arm and pulled her to a stop.
“What?” she whispered. Her eyes flicking back to the Cusp.
I shook my head, not entirely sure, my eyes scanned the shadows. Something was not right.
I was drawn to a pocket of darkness between two houses across the street from us. There was a black bin, a wooden fence, and then the shadow—the moving shadow., except there was nothing moving to cast it.
“What the fuck?” Bernadette grabbed my hand. “Let’s go.” We broke into a trot.
I spotted another one farther up ahead, larger, spreading across the street toward us like a hungry stain. “Bernadette! Run!”
We broke cover, not caring if anyone saw us, sprinting toward the Cusp as if our lives depended on it, because I was pretty sure they did. I saw them from the corner of my eye racing toward us, moving shadows ripping free from pockets of darkness. They were hungry and we were their prey.
We were a couple of meters away from the Cusp when the world fell into complete darkness. I skidded to a halt and grabbed for Bernadette, felt her hands on me, clutching my wrist. And then we were running, veering away from the Cusp. The moving shadows were cutting us off. They were herding us!
I needed to communicate this to Bernadette, but speech wasn’t possible at the pace we were moving. I expected something to grab me at any minute, expected to go down. We flew between the houses, jumped a couple of fences, and then the terrain changed. The houses crumbled, the ground grew uneven. Broken, everything was broken. The landscape that flashed by in the periphery of my vision was an apocalyptic mess.
What the hell was going on?
I stumbled over something and went down hard, yelping and hissing as the gravel raked my arm. The sudden change in momentum made my head spin, and when I looked up I saw Bernadette skid to a halt and glance back, not at me, but at something behind me.
A chasm opened up in my chest. I didn’t need to look back to know what was coming. I could see it in Bernadette’s wide eyes, hear it in her scream.
“Get the fuck up, Ash, now!”
I scrambled to my feet just as I felt its fingers on the nape of my neck. My blood roared in my ears, drowning out Bernadette’s scream. My terror morphed, twisting and swirling, becoming an ache, a yearning, a hunger. I forgot about Bernadette, I forgot about the mission. I forgot everything. The only thing that mattered was the darkness. I arched into it as it slid over me, reached for it as it reached for me. I wanted it. I needed it. My body burned for it.
“No!” Fingers raked at my scalp, tangled in my head, and I yelped as I was pulled out from the shadow’s warm embrace.
“Damn it, Ash! Run!”
My head swam, my mind cleared, and we were running again.
We didn’t get far before Bernadette was lifted off her feet and yanked backward.
My momentum took me a few more feet before I managed to grind to a halt, spin, and head back toward her. I caught a flash of her eye whites and a strangled scream before she was wrapped in swirling darkness.
I was attacked by conflicting emotions: jealousy and alarm. Once again I shelved the questions and did the only thing I could. I l
eapt into the fray.
The shadow was like a living entity, solid and incorporeal at the same time. Bernadette thrashed and kicked, and I grabbed at her, trying to find purchase to pull her free. Then she went limp. I went flying backward, hit the ground, and skidded a foot or two away on my arse.
The fucking shadow had ejected me. It had what it wanted. I knew with certainty that Bernadette was dying, that whatever the shadow was doing was killing her. I had to do something. I had to get it off her.
I pulled myself to my feet. My skin prickled, and I didn’t need to scan the area around me to know I was surrounded. Instead of icy terror, all I felt was hot anticipation. My heart pounded against my ribcage, my pulse roared in my ears, the thump of it thick in my throat. I was moving toward the thing that had my friend. The darkness that was devouring her, the darkness I needed desperately to touch.
I plunged my hands into it and threw back my head as the delicious heat of it climbed up my arms, over my shoulders and neck and short circuited my brain. I saw reds and purples and greens and my nether regions throbbed with a sexual need that had me gasping for something I didn’t understand. I saw bright spots in the sky. My left shoulder erupted in pain and then melted into a tingle. Then it was over. Just like that. I slumped to the ground, knuckles pressed against the sharp gravel, whimpering.
“Ash? Oh, Mother! Ash! What the hell just happened?”
I sat back on my haunches and raised my head to look at her. She was pale, trembling in the moonlight. For the first time since I had met her, Bernadette looked out of her depth, small and vulnerable. The world around us was silent and empty of the moving shadows.
“Ash . . . how . . . what did you do?” Bernadette moved across the ground, shuffling until she was right before me. Her hands cupped my face. “Babe, what did you do? How did you send them away?”
I didn’t know. I couldn’t explain. She saw the confusion in my eyes and offered me a shaky smile.
“You saved me.”
“There! I tolded ya I smelled ’em!” The sound of pounding footsteps approached.
Our heads snapped up, our eyes met in panic. I recognised that voice. It was the voice from the house we’d raided.
