The Civil Dead (Dark Season IV)

by Amy Cross

  But there's nothing.

  They're out.

  Both of them!

  For the first time ever, I'm alone down here!

  I've waited for this moment. For my chance to explore. But now that it's here, I have no idea what to do. I'm like a rabbit caught in the headlights. I have this perfect opportunity to snoop around, and I have to make it count. But should I? Isn't that immoral? Yes, I suppose it is. Will that stop me? Probably not.

  It's kind of liberating to realise that I have total freedom to explore. In the past, when I've been down here I've always been with Vincent or Patrick, and they've always kept me in a couple of rooms. Thinking about it, isn't it kind of odd that they've never let me see the rest of the house? Vincent says Patrick has no room of his own, but I know there's an upstairs floor and I'm pretty sure they must use it for something. Now's my chance! I take a deep breath and get ready. Now I can explore at my leisure. I can look around the house.

  "Vincent!" I call out one final time, to make sure that there's no-one around.

  No answer.

  "Patrick?"

  Again, no answer.

  Okay, I have no idea how long I have. They could come back at any moment. Heading out into the hallway, I look at the stairs. The thought of going up to the top floor of the house fills me with excitement. I guess what I'm interested in is seeing the mundane aspects of Vincent and Patrick's live. Sure, they're mysterious and strange, and Patrick - at least - is a bona fide vampire. But what do they do when they're just sitting around at home?

  I carefully start walking up the stairs, constantly worried that at any moment Patrick or Vincent will appear. But instead, I'm soon up on the top floor, from which three doors lead off into different rooms. It's something of an anti-climax, given that I'd been waiting so long to finally take a look around.

  I pick a door at random and slowly turn the handle, half-expecting to be interrupted. But no-one comes, so I push the door all the way open. To my surprise, I find an empty space with just one object inside: a baby's crib in the centre of the room. It's totally empty, but it looks to have been made up recently with fresh sheets. And it's old, as if it was hand-made many years ago, with a few toys left nearby on the floor. There's something creepy about finding it in here, though: just a crib in the middle of the room, with no real efforts to make the rest of the room nice.

  I back out of the room, pulling the door shut and turning to look at my next target.

  In the second room, I find a fairly normal-looking old bed, and piles of books on the floor. Looking at the books, with their old-fashioned hardback appearance, I'm pretty sure this is Vincent's room. It looks pretty ordinary, like the room of any old man you might meet, and it feels somewhat wrong to be in here, so I go back out and look at the final door, which must be Patrick's room.

  Do I have the right to do this? Can I just march into Patrick's room and start looking around? What's he got in there, anyway? Rage Against the Machine posters? Or maybe he's more into stuff like Maroon 5 or The Garbage Pail Kids? No, none of that seems right. Still, as tempting as it is to go inside, I feel I should restrain myself. After all, I wouldn't like it if he came into my room while I wasn't there.

  Then again, he does just enter my room without knocking sometimes. I turn around and there he is. So I guess that if I did go into his room, it's just be payback for all the times he's done it to me.

  Taking a deep breath, I reach down and slowly start to turn the handle, then I slowly start to push the door open. At first, all I can see are the light blue walls and bare wooden floorboards. I push the door open a little more, and now it's open nearly halfway and I can see that it's almost as bare as -

  Suddenly there's a shuffling sound from inside the room, and for a moment I see the side of a woman's arm before the door is slammed shut in my face. I step back. That arm couldn't have been Patrick or Vincent: it was unmistakeably a woman's arm. I stay completely still, not knowing what to do.

  "Hello?" I say, my voice wavering a little.

  There's no reply.

  "I didn't mean to disturb you," I say.

  All sorts of ideas flash through my mind. Who is this woman? Patrick's mother? His sister? Or maybe she's some distant relative, or someone who knows Vincent? Or could she be one of Patrick's old girlfriends, like me or Rose Tisser. Patrick does seem to have a habit of tossing women aside when he's done with them. But I kind of understand. After all, if he's really hundreds of years old, he can't ever find someone he'll be with forever, can he? Take me, for example. I could spend the rest of my life with Patrick, but he can't spend the rest of his life with me.

  I reach out to the door handle again and slowly, very slowly, I turn it.

  "I'm coming in," I say. "I hope that's okay".

  I push the door open, expecting that at any moment it'll be slammed in my face. But eventually it swings all the way, and I'm faced with an empty room with bare wooden floorboards and pale blue walls. I step inside and look about, but there's really nothing to see. Nothing, and no-one. I look behind the door, but there's nothing. I walk to the window, which is shut but unlocked. Could someone have climbed out? Or did I imagine the woman's arm?

  I suddenly realise that I'm at the window with my back to the room, and there's a sound behind me. Like someone breathing very quietly and very slowly. I can tell instantly that it's not Patrick or Vincent. And just as I'm thinking about what it could be, I hear the door creak as it swings shut. And the breathing sound is still in the room with me.

  I turn around.

  Standing a few feet away from me is a woman. At least, I think it's a woman. She's wearing what appears to be a white wedding dress, with a veil covering most of her face. Her arms are bare, and I can instantly see that this is the woman whose arm I saw a moment ago.

  I take a deep breath.

  "Hi," I say, hoping desperately to get the conversation into normal territory so that I don't have to think about what else could happen. "My name's Sophie".

  The woman doesn't move. She just stands there, breathing. And as I look at her, I see something dark appear on the white fabric over her stomach. It's blood. A small patch of blood, steady and getting larger, is appearing. It's as if she's slowly bleeding from a wound on her belly.

  I open my mouth to ask if she's okay, but something tells me she's not the one who should be worried right now.

  I step to the side, planning to walk around her and out of the room. She turns to watch me, but she makes no effort to stop me. As I reach the door, I realise that there's no reason to be scared.

  "Hi," I say again. "I was just looking around".

  She stares at me. I still can't see her face, but the patch of blood on the front of her dress is getting bigger and bigger.

  "Are you okay?" I ask. "How do you know Patrick and Vincent?"

  No answer.

  It's at this point that I decide to do something that I know I shouldn't do. I step forwards, and I reach a hand up towards the veil that covers her face. I know I shouldn't get anywhere near her, but the truth is, I don't feel like she's dangerous. After all, if she's living with Patrick and Vincent, she must be okay, right? Why would they let someone bad live with them?

  "Don't worry," I say. "I'm a friend of theirs too".

  I put my hand against the veil, ready to brush it aside.

  "I just want to say hi," I say.

  I gently part the veil to reveal her face. The first thing I notice is how pale she is, and the second thing I notice is that she looks awful, with dark, sunken eyes as if she's close to death. It's a pretty shocking sight, but as I stare at her some more, I realise there's something else. Something about the way she stares at me. I look at her and from somewhere deep inside I start to feel this horrible feeling of dread.

  I look down as I hear the blood from her stomach wound starting to drop onto the wooden floor.

  I look back up. She still has her eyes fixed on me.

  I step back. I can't be in this room. I turn and r
un out, straight down the stairs and out the front door of the house, into the cavern. I run to the tunnel that leads out of here, and it's only now that I stop and turn to look back at the house. There's no sign of the woman. She didn't follow me out. That's good. But I don't know what to do, because when I looked under the veil, I recognised the woman.

  It was me.

  Fourteen

  I wait at the entrance to the tunnel. During the night, the forest becomes pitch black and I cannot see any ghosts, though I can hear them from time to time. They are out there, haunting the spaces between the trees. They dare not come close to the tunnel, because they are terrified of what they would hear if they were exposed to the mad ramblings of the prisoner. Nevertheless, they are curious, and they shuffle through the forest, watching me.

  I can't see them at all.

  When the first light of morning arrives, there is still no sign of my father. It had expected him to come back up by now, and I'm concerned that he is still down there. I consider going to check on him, but I know that this will not help. I simply have to wait until he has finished with the prisoner.

  Or until the prisoner has finished with him...

  All around me, the ghosts are now visible in the morning light. They seem to be ignoring me, but I know that they are here to see what happens. They long to go down and see the prisoner for themselves, to be sure that he is chained up and will never be set free. If they could see this with their own eyes, they might finally be free to leave this world. But they are too timid, too scared, and so they are doomed to wander forever.

  There is movement behind me in the tunnel. I turn to see my father emerging. He looks older and more tired than I have ever seen him, yet the mere fact that he has emerged at all is a sign that he has been able to withstand a night spent in the prisoner's company. Nevertheless, the question remains: what has been the cost of his night down there with the prisoner?

  Slowly, my father tells me what I need to know. He tells me that I can never force the Tenderling to leave Sophie alone, that the creature will kill her unless it can be persuaded to give her up out of choice. I tell my father that there is no way to do this, that there is no way to communicate with the Tenderling. But my father insists that the prisoner told him that there is a way, even if he did not tell him what that way might be.

  I tell my father that I have to try. He says that he understands, but then he turns and starts heading back down to the chamber.

  I ask him where he's going.

  He says he has to go back down to the prisoner. He says he can't tell me why, but that he has to speak to him again, to ask him about some of the things that were said during the night. He says that there are things I can't understand and that I must not ask him to explain. And as he shuffles off down the tunnel back to see the prisoner, I realise that although I have the answer to Sophie's problem, my father has lost his battle with the prisoner.

  I wait and watch until I can no longer see my father in the tunnel. I do not know if I will ever see him again.

  Fifteen

  I open my eyes and find I'm on the cold, hard rocky floor of the cavern, close to Vincent and Patrick's house. At first, I'm completely confused, unable to remember how I ended up down here at all, but then I remember the whole experience in the house with the woman. Still, I have no idea how I ended up asleep. The last thing I remember is coming away from the house and planning to leave the cavern altogether. It seems pretty odd that I apparently decided to take a nap along the way, so... what? Am I narcoleptic now?

  I try to get up, but a feeling of complete tiredness washes over me. I've been feeling tired for weeks now, but this is worse than ever. I feel completely exhausted. It's like not only do I not have any energy, but I have negative energy, like something's pulling me down. It takes all my strength to just sit up. This is getting really strange.

  I feel something sore on the base of my back. Rubbing my hand down there, I feel a lump. It's bigger than the lump I had before, and it feels harder. As I feel it, I realise there's another one close to it. I reach both my hands around and soon I've found five or six of these lumps, all over my back. And then, just as I'm trying to work out what they are, I realise there's something on my shoulder, something painful, like I'm being bitten. I look at it and to my horror I see a thin red thing, like a straw, sticking out. And it's now that I realise I can here a kind of gurgling, sucking sound from behind. I turn to see where the straw goes.

  Sitting behind me is this... thing. It's human-shaped but completely naked, and its skin is red. The 'straw' in my shoulder seems to go straight into its face, or what I assume is its face. Instead of eyes, it has what look like two dark red stab wounds in its face, but I can tell that it's looking at me.

  I instinctively pull the 'straw' out of my shoulder, and the creature starts to hiss. It starts to crawl closer to me, and I crawl away. It keeps hissing as it reaches out to grab me, so I get up and run towards the house, stopping to glance over my shoulder. The creature is following, but it seems to have having difficulty climbing over the rocks that litter the cavern floor. The long straw coming from its face is flailing around like a snake, trying to find me.

  I run inside the house and push the door shut. Vincent and Patrick have to turn up soon, don't they? I look out the window and see that the creature has almost reached the house. Yeah, Vincent and Patrick would be pretty useful right now.

  The creature bangs against the door, but I manage to keep it pushed shut. For a moment, I feel as if I'm going to fall asleep again, but I fight the urge. The creature is banging against the door again, trying to force its way in, but there's no way I'm letting this door open. I don't know what that thing is, but it doesn't strike me as being particularly friendly. I look at the hole on my shoulder where the straw was inside me and it looks red and sore.

  I have a funny feeling that if I survive this, I'm gonna freak out later.

  The banging on the door stops. For a moment I feel relieved. Has it given up? But then I realise it's probably just gone to try to find another way in. I make sure the door is properly closed, then I back away and go to look in the other rooms. So far, so good: there's no sign of the creature. But just as I'm starting to think about relaxing, I hear the sound of breaking glass upstairs, and the sound of its hissing.

  I push the door of Vincent's study shut and ram a chair under the door handle to try to stop the thing getting in. Then I go to Vincent's desk and start looking about for anything I can use as a weapon. After all, this thing looks pretty organic, so a good pair of scissors to the neck might finish it off.

  As I'm looking, I see a book that Vincent has left open. I can't decipher the writing at all, but the illustration is unmistakeable: it's an old drawing of the creature that's pursuing me. I look at the book; it seems to be old. What is this thing, and where did it comes from? And why's it after me?

  I hear hissing and, as I look up, something bangs on the door. I don't think it can get in, at least not for a while, but I don't think it's going to give up any time soon. I turn to look at the windows, expecting it to appear at any moment, but for now I can still hear the hissing at the door so at least I think there's a chance that it's still trying to find a way in.

  Unfortunately, there's nothing I can find to use as a weapon. Damn Vincent, couldn't he keep a knife or a pair of scissors in his study? Or perhaps even a machine gun? Or couldn't he just be here? He'd know what to do, right?

  As the hissing and banging continues, I try to make out the writing in the book. But it's not even in English, it's in Latin or something. Still, this is such an old book. This creature, or creatures like it, must have been around for centuries. So surely someone has found a way to kill it by now?

  The hissing and banging stop. I stare at the door. Now I'm worried. It's obviously trying something else. I grab a candlestick, figuring it's better to have something rather than nothing. As I wait, I slowly start to hear a new noise. Somewhere in the house, there's the sound of scratching.


  Sixteen

  I have to be careful here. The Tenderling is downstairs, trying to find a way in to the study where Sophie has holed up. For now, the Tenderling's goal is to keep her alive so it can finish consuming her energy, but if it realises I'm here, the creature will undoubtedly decide to kill her. So I really have to make sure it doesn't know I'm here, which is going to be difficult considering I need to get into that room with Sophie.

  From the top of the stairs, I peer around the corner. The Tenderling is scratching at the wall, trying to create a hole it can use to enter the study. With its hard, sharp claws, it's starting to make real inroads, and in a few minutes it'll be through. So I go through to one of the upstairs rooms and quietly slide open a window before lowering myself out and jumping down. I look in through the window of the study and I can see Sophie in there. She's looking at the book my father showed me, the one about the Tenderling.

  Okay. There's only one way to do this.

  Seventeen

  The window smashes behind me. I turn, ready to face the creature, but instead I'm confronted by Patrick. I'm instantly overcome with a feeling of relief, as if it's all going to be okay now. But then I see the look in his eyes, and I realise he's concerned. He doesn't look like someone who has arrived with all the answers. Instead, he looks like someone who thinks everyone's about to die.

  "What is that thing?" I ask.

  He grabs me by the arm and takes me to the far corner of the study, where he turns me around and starts examining my back. I figure there's no point asking any more questions, it's not like he's going to sit down and have a long chat with me, so I wait. I can feel his hand touching the sore lumps on my back, running his fingers over them one by one. And then, suddenly, I feel a sharp pain. After a moment, Patrick reaches his hand out to me and shows me what looks like a small black pebble. Is that what was in my back.