by Steve Feasey
Mr Lipman came in from the door at the back of the shop. The old man had gone upstairs to see if his sick wife needed anything, having earlier explained that she’d recently come out of hospital and was still convalescing. He’d clearly heard their conversation. He walked over to the curtain to peer through the gap.
The man and the woman were both dead. They lay in a mangled heap on the floor, an island of wrecked flesh floating in a sea of red.
Mr Lipman turned and nodded at Jake. ‘To keep yourself and those that you love safe is not cowardice, Jake.’
Earlier, when Robert had explained to the old man and his son everything he’d seen since the black tower arrived, the tailor had simply sat in silence, not interrupting once, even when Robert had told him about the two zombies.
Now Mr Lipman had seen it for himself. Robert took in the old man’s reaction, and was surprised again at how calm and detached the tailor was.
‘What are we going to do, Dad?’ Jake asked.
The father took his son’s hand. ‘Someone will come and rescue us, don’t worry.’
‘They can’t get in. You saw that police car!’
‘Someone will come,’ his father repeated.
The old man had sighed then, turned on his heel and walked back through the shop. After he’d left, Robert had taken up his position at the curtains, peering out through a tiny gap at the nightmare world on the other side. He’d stayed there, unmoving, until now.
Something caught Robert’s eye. Something about the way the few people he could see at this end of the street were looking and pointing up the road, in the direction of the force field that he and Jake had seen earlier. Robert opened the curtains wider and stepped through the gap so that he could press his face up against the glass of the shop door. He strained to see what it was they’d been gesticulating at, and his frustration grew when he was unable to make anything out. There was something about the expressions on the survivors’ faces. He turned to check he was not imagining things.
And there it was.
The look on their faces told Robert everything he needed to know. Fear was replaced by hope, and that could only mean one thing surely – somehow the invisible barrier that they’d been trapped within had been breached.
‘Wait here,’ he said to his son, who, sensing the change in his father’s mood, had come to stand by his side. He reached out for the bolts that secured the door from the inside.
‘Don’t go out there, Dad. Please!’
Robert dropped down on to his haunches so that his face was level with his son’s. He smiled reassuringly. ‘I won’t be long. I just need to check something out. Wait here.’ He straightened up and slid back the two heavy bolts. He paused for a second as he wrapped his fingers round the door handle, psyching himself up, before pulling it open and stepping outside.
He could already hear the change in the noise of the crowd – there were excited voices among the shouts. He walked out into that ghastly purple gloom again and looked to his left.
There was a huge opening in the wall at the end of the street where it straddled the shops on either side. The light coming in through the gap was bright and of an earthly hue that made Robert’s heart jam up against his chest, so that it was as much as he could do not to cry out in joy. A deluge of people flooded through it. He could hear voices somewhere on the other side, directing the escapees to hurry up and giving them instructions about where they should go.
Other people in the street had also seen the breach. They grabbed their loved ones, hauling them forward in a sprint to try and escape.
It took Robert less than a second to realize that this was his chance to get Jake to safety. He ducked back inside, shouting out to his son that they were leaving. He was already halfway across the shop, heading for the small glass-panelled doorway in the back that Mr Lipman had disappeared through, when he heard a shout of dismay from outside. There was something about that noise that spurred him on even faster. He took the stairs up to the apartment over the shop three at a time.
There was frosted glass door at the top. Robert pushed through it, hardly taking in the living room on the other side as he sought out the bedroom that Mr Lipman and his wife must be in. He was in luck: the first door he tried on the far wall opened on to a darkened room, the heavy curtains drawn against that terrible light outside. Lying in the bed was Mrs Lipman. One glance at the woman was enough to tell Robert that her husband had brought her home from hospital to die. Stick-thin, with hollowed cheeks and sunken eyes, she could have been one of those creatures roaming about outside. She didn’t even look up as he came in. The tailor, who’d been sitting in a chair beside his wife’s bedside, stood up, her hand still in his as he turned to face the intruder.
‘We have to go,’ Robert said, looking between them. ‘I think we can get out.’
The old man slowly nodded his head as he took this in.
‘We have to leave now. I don’t know how long we’ve—’
‘No,’ the old man said. He smiled sadly down at the tiny figure in the bed next to him. ‘My Rosa’s not well enough to go anywhere.’
‘I’ll carry her,’ the younger man said, taking a step into the room. ‘Jake can hold your hand and I can carry Rosa. It’s not far.’
The tailor cut him off with a shake of his head. ‘No,’ he said again.
Robert went to say something, but the sound of his son’s voice on the stairs below stopped him from arguing any further.
‘Dad!’ Jake called up. ‘There’s something happening to that hole. It’s… wobbling.’
Robert cursed himself for having left the front door open. How could he have been so stupid?
He glanced at Mr Lipman again. The old man had already stepped around the bed, and was shooing him out of the room. ‘Go on,’ he said. ‘Get that boy of yours out of here.’
‘Thank you,’ the younger man nodded, grabbing hold of the tailor’s hand and pumping it up and down. The old man waved him off, pushing him towards the doorway. Robert Holt stopped, turned and looked back at the frail old woman in the bed, her eyes still closed. ‘Will you be OK?’
‘We’ll be fine,’ the tailor said, gently shoving the other man out of the room and closing the door behind him. ‘As a boy I survived the Nazis. I’m sure we’ll make it through this.’
Jake and Robert ran from the shop, the father dragging his son along behind him. The hole was significantly smaller than it had been when he’d first seen it from outside the shop, and with each step his heart sank as it continued to shrink. Whatever the exit was, it was clear it was becoming increasingly unstable and could shut at any second.
We’re not going to make it! Robert thought.
Up ahead, a man threw himself at the breach. Robert watched, gasping as the gateway made another of those violent spasms just as the man dived towards it. The edge nearest to the escapee shifted dramatically and he plunged head first into the invisible barrier, screaming out as he convulsed wildly, before being thrown backwards to the ground, where he lay unmoving. At the sight of this, many of those running down the street cried out and faltered.
Robert and Jake were no more than ten metres or so away when they heard somebody shouting from the other side in a loud Irish accent, saying something about getting through to the other side before it was too late. This voice was answered by another that agreed, adding orders to grab their weapons and enter the hole immediately.
Father and son could now make out the people these voices belonged to through the gap: a tall bald man with the freakiest orange-gold eyes was throwing back one side of his coat, his fingers curling round the handle of the biggest knife Robert had ever seen. Another man, equally tall with close-cropped grey-and-black hair and an ugly scar on his face, was about to step through when he saw the father and son hurtling towards the hole.
‘Wait!’ he shouted in a broad Irish accent. ‘There’s a little lad and his dad coming.’ He took in the two of them, his eyes narrowing for a second. ‘Stand back and
let them through!’
Something happened again to the hole. It closed for a moment, the healthy, hope-filled light that had come through it disappearing, replaced by that sickening purple colour. Robert cried out in anger and frustration. But the hole opened again. It was even smaller – no more than a metre across and two high – and the edges shifted to and fro.
‘COME ON! You can make it!’ Robert heard the Irishman shout. He could see him crouching down, peering through the gap at them and wildly urging them on with his arm.
Robert didn’t hesitate. He strengthened his grip on Jake’s hand and threw himself forward.
The humans tumbled through, landing in a heap on the tarmac road which greedily skinned the flesh from their hands and knees. Robert was aware of a high wailing sound and turned, realizing it was his son’s voice. He pulled the boy to him and held him tight. He looked up at the late afternoon sky and thanked the gods for saving them both.
A shout from behind caused him to look back in the direction from which they’d come. Time seemed to slow as a number of things happened at once.
The Irishman had gone through the gap followed by the tall bald man, who turned to look through the hole from the other side, his gaze resting for a moment on the father and son. In that terrible light his eyes, already a bizarre colour, seemed to glow with a fierce golden luminosity. He shifted his attention and called out to the three remaining men on the outside. As he did so, Robert noticed the vicious-looking fangs in his mouth.
A vampire, he thought. It was strange, but after everything else he’d experienced already that day, the sight of the creature did not fill him with the horror it should have.
The hole shrank, almost closed and opened again, and it was clear that it was at its most unstable. A female voice cried out, and Robert turned to look across at Hag for the first time, his mouth falling open at what he saw. She was not standing on the ground. Instead the old woman was suspended in the air about a metre above the road surface. The sight of a human levitating was shocking enough, but what was happening to the rest of her was truly horrifying. The old woman’s body was being slammed around in the air, her head snapping back and forth, arms and legs flying out from her sides with a violence that was sickening. She looked like a life-sized marionette being controlled by a cruel puppet master intent on wrecking the toy.
He turned again to see that one of the remaining figures on this side had got through the breach in the wall. Jake whimpered in his arms, and his father clutched him closer. Despite the need to get his son to safety, Robert was incapable of tearing his eyes away from the scene unravelling before him. The old woman screamed out again, and as she did so Robert watched as the next man, hunched forward and carefully eyeing the shifting opening, made an attempt to get through to the other side, throwing himself at the hole which was now no bigger than the size of a car door. He dived just as the aperture closed for the last time. The old woman let out an almighty shriek and collapsed to the ground in a heap.
One half of the nether-creature fell to the floor on the human side, the other fell at the feet of Lucien Charron. There was no blood; the ghastly wounds on the severed body had been instantly cauterized by the awesome energy of the Shield. The air stank with the foul smell of burned flesh.
Lucien looked down at the severed head and torso of the demon, knowing that he was responsible for the creature’s death. He lifted his eyes, meeting those of Tom, who gave a tiny shake of his head as if reading his thoughts.
‘We should go,’ the Irishman said, turning about and looking up the road.
They’d taken no more than a dozen steps when they heard a low groan from somewhere ahead of them. They stopped and watched as a woman – the same one that Robert had watched limping away from the zombie earlier – pulled herself from under the body of the man lying on top of her. That she was dead, or at least should have been, there was no doubt. Nothing could have survived the terrible wound on one side of her neck. Dull grey eyes, from which life no longer shone, stared out from a face devoid of any expression. She made a low, animalistic noise, something between a loud sigh and a groan, and slowly got to her feet.
‘Ah crap,’ Tom muttered.
The zombie’s head snapped towards the sound, and she let out a blood-curdling cry as she took off, running down the road in the Irishman’s direction.
‘D’ya ever get the feeling that it’s just going to be “one of those days”?’ Tom shouted across at Lucien.
The man who’d been lying on top of the woman also began to stir.
‘It looks like our fears have come true,’ Lucien said, stepping forward and hefting the machete in his hand. ‘They’re reanimating already’
Tom nodded, copying his boss’s stance.
‘Let’s go to work,’ he said.
25
Helde’s spirit resided in a place of pure sorcery now. Her physical body was still at Leroth, but she was only vaguely aware of it. She’d had to immerse herself deeply in the dark magic necessary to maintain the Shield, and to do so she’d been forced to leave the body that her mind resided in. The otherworldly plane she now occupied was difficult and dangerous to inhabit for long. It was made up of complex, dark, interacting energies that were impossible to comprehend in any conventional sense, and she was forced to reinterpret them into something her mind was able to manage and handle.
She was the giant spider at the epicentre of a vast web that stretched out beneath her in every direction before it disappeared into the darkness on all sides. Strange and sinister things lurked in the inky blackness: things that would happily devour her if she allowed her concentration to slip. She could hear their low, guttural voices whispering to each other as they eyed her greedily. She had no right to be here – not for any length of time, anyway. Those adept in dark magic came to this place every time they used their skills, but it was usually a brief visit – a fleeting glimpse as they hooked into the energies here, and used them to conjure their magic. Each time it was different: a black forest, a subterranean cave, an inky underwater world – a thousand different variations. But the things were always there, always waiting for a chance to feed.
She was in control at the moment, but it would not do to let her guard down, even for a second.
She glanced at one of the strands she was crouched among. Thick black cords, the width of a man’s arm, trembled and vibrated. They were fleshy and sticky to the touch, and beneath the pliant surface something squirmed and writhed as if the web were filled with living creatures, all of which were trying to find a way out through the labyrinth of threads. She stayed still, focusing her powers on maintaining the Shield and trying to ignore the malignant creatures pressing in on her from the void.
Helde sensed Hag before the old woman was anywhere near the protective dome that hung over Leroth. The sorceress was coming, and she was not alone. Helde knew that her adversary would try to breach the Shield, and that it would be up to her to stop that happening.
She felt the jangling pull at the edge of the web as Hag began to perform the magic she would use to try and create an opening. The vibrations along the threads of the web were transmitted to her body through long legs, covered in a vast array of hairs and sensors to pick up the tiniest of movements. It was in this way that she’d felt the ineffectual attempts of the trapped humans as they threw themselves at the Shield to try and escape. But this was quite different. They had never met, but the moment Hag opened up her mind to begin the magic, the two sorceresses’ energies became linked, and they knew and sensed things about each other, gaining an insight into one another’s skills. Hag was an accomplished sorceress, and Helde knew how difficult it would be to try and hold the Shield completely in place in the face of her adversary’s attempts to gain entry.
Helde’s focus on the other sorceress was nearly her undoing. One of the shadow creatures seized its chance and lunged forward, pulling out of the darkness and swooping towards her, its mouth wide and teeth bared. She reacted just in time, br
inging her magical defences back up to thwart the attack. At that moment a human threw itself at the supernatural barrier, and Hag used this and Helde’s temporary distraction to redouble her efforts. Helde let out a shriek. She banished her dark attacker back to the shadows, but it was too late. Hag had found a way inside her defences and had created an opening in the Shield.
The great spider left its place at the centre of the web, scrabbling out in the direction of the wreckage that her adversary had caused. She quickly reached the site, taking in the ruined mess of the web, its perfect symmetry now in tatters. She began to spin new lengths of the black cord, pulling the stuff from the spinnerets at the back of her body and using all of her legs to weave it in and out, repairing the damage. It was hard work. Now that she ‘d breached the Shield, Hag fought to keep the hole open, and as fast as Helde wove her repairs, the old woman on the outside tore them apart again – a giant, invisible hand that smashed through time and time again.
Helde redoubled her efforts, spinning the black cords ever more quickly. She drew upon the dark energy that flowed from the source of the Shield deep in the bowels of the tower. It lent itself to her readily, bolstering her powers and making her stronger. At the same time she felt her adversary weaken a little. Spurred on by this, she repaired the wall again, and this time more of the patched areas held in place, the opening decreasing in size as the old woman tired. Helde allowed herself to reach out into Hag’s mind again, and she felt the weakening sorceress’s physical pain, her body ravaged by the counter-effects of the spell she performed. The old woman’s agony drove Helde on even more, and then, quite suddenly, Hag gave in, her energies disappearing as she broke free from the dark realm and allowed the breach in the Shield to collapse in on itself.
Helde let out a hiss of triumph. She repaired the web again, and this time her construction held firm. She sank back, exhaustion eating its way through her, and as the enormity of what she still had to do dawned on her, she almost surrendered herself. But she could not let her master down. Caliban had brought her back to life. The vampire had fed her demon blood, then his own, to reanimate her. And now he stood guard over her while she was at her most vulnerable. She would fulfil her promises to him. She somehow dragged her bulky arachnoid body back along the black strands to the centre of the web, where she sank down, utterly spent.
