by M. V. Stott
I stood.
‘Jake? Jake, can you hear me?’
I couldn’t hear him in my head anymore.
‘Jake?’
The black rippled.
‘Night, night, love. Don’t let the bed bugs bite.’
‘Night, Mum.’
Night air on my skin. Goosebumps.
I looked around. I wasn’t in the dark anymore, and I wasn’t in my own dreams.
I was in the back alley in Acton. I could see two small legs poking out from behind some bins.
Alice Travers, the young girl beaten to death by her two bullies, eighty years ago.
I was in the creature’s realm.
It had me.
33
‘David? David, where are you?’
I closed my eyes and tried to feel my hand in his. I wasn’t in my own dreams anymore, I was in a different realm of existence, a realm created by this creature when the murder of Alice Travers gave it life. I could easily be trapped here if I didn’t make myself an exit point, which is why I had David holding my hand. As long as he kept hold of me I had a living, conscious link back to my own realm, to what we think of as the “real world,” and I could escape from here.
‘David.’
There.
There it was.
I could feel his hand squeezing mine. The warmth of his skin against my own.
‘I’m here.’ His voice was a whisper, indistinct, like a suggestion of a voice carried on the wind.
‘David?’
‘I’m here, I have you. I won’t let go, Magic Lady.’
Without opening my eyes I imagined a door that would lead me back to him. That if I were to turn the handle, open it, and step on through I’d find myself back with him. Back in my coven.
I imagined it was real, then demanded it be real, pushing the command out of myself.
I opened my eyes; there was a door in the brick wall to my right. A neon sign above it read EXIT.
Now my way out was set I could get back to it any time I needed to. But I wouldn’t step through it until I had done what I’d come here for.
First, I was going to find the kids. Find them and get them to this exit point. After that I was going to put an end to this creature. Not block its entrance into our world, not put a lock on its door. Locks weaken, and if this saga had taught me anything, it’s that half a solution wasn’t a solution at all.
No, this time, my time, I was going to make sure returning to haunt the dreams of children would never be an option, or I was going to die trying.
‘Jake, can you hear me now?’
Silence. No smart-arse reply. I couldn’t feel him anymore, but I knew he was still there. I could still hear the sound of Mark taunting him. His fear was still in me, and that meant Jake must still be there too.
I turned to where Alice Travers lay, her face a battered mess, and knelt beside her.
‘Hello, Alice.’
Alice’s broken lips twitched and her eyes flickered open, the whites bloodshot, one bulging from its socket.
‘My name is Stella.’
‘Stella?’
Her voice had no power behind it. No breath. No life.
‘Have you seen any other children here? Maybe a girl called Amy?’
‘I think I’m in a terrible way, Miss Stella. Could you call me a doctor? I don’t want to die.’
I took her cold, damp hand in mine.
‘I’m sorry, Alice, but you’re already a long time dead. What happened to you was eighty years ago.’
‘Eighty years? No, it just happened. It’s always just happening. I get back up and clean off the blood and then they come running after me again.’
She sat up, her clothes tearing away from the dried blood, and pushed herself back onto her feet, joints cracking like logs on a fire.
‘Look,’ she said, pointing to the other end of the alley, ‘Here they come again, and again, and again.’
I turned to see her attackers, her school bullies, running into the alley, their faces a mixture of joy and savagery, running towards her. I instinctively pulled the surrounding magic into myself and unleashed a molten arc of power, trying to stop the kids in their tracks, but they ran straight through the spell, not even flinching.
I looked away as they punched and kicked and stamped at Alice. They weren’t really alive. There was nothing I could do to stop this. Alice Travers was long dead and beyond anything I could do. I could only help the kids that were here but still alive, laid up in hospitals across London, in a hidden eaves den, in a room, laying beside me, in the London Coven.
Eventually the bullies blinked out of existence and it was just me and Alice left in the alley.
‘Alice? Alice, have you seen Amy?’
‘Yes. She was here once. I remember her. She tried to help me too, but you can’t help the dead, can you? Too late then. Too, too late.’
‘Can you tell me where she might be?’
Alice nodded, ‘She’s where her fear is. Find her fear. Oh look, here they come again.’
Alice got back to her feat.
‘Thanks, I’m sorry I can’t help you,’ I said, and turned from her, passing the two bullies as I made my way out of the alley.
Alice’s scream cut off abruptly as I stepped out of the alley and into what lay beyond. I didn’t walk out onto a street in Acton, as I would have done in the real world, instead I stepped into something that looked like a nightmare drawn by Escher.
Random pieces of reality were jammed together: rooms, streets, forests, lakes, schools, back gardens, caves, bedrooms, all slapped together by a madman in a dizzying array that made my head swim. There seemed no reason to it. It felt like I might fall into nothing with the next step. There was no way to orientate myself as the different places didn’t sit next to each other, but jutted out at every angle
‘Amy!’
Cackling laughter. I whirled around to see a boy in the distance. A black shape, a shadow. Was that the monster?
He stepped forwards. It was Mark. Jake’s meat suit. His bully.
‘Where are you going, Jake, you fucking queer?’
This realm was reading the fear inside of me, but it wasn’t mine, it was Jake’s. I wondered what effect this would have on him if he was really here? Would it pull out a primal sense of terror? Would it reduce him to a terrified wreck?
‘Oi, bender, I’m talking to you.’
Mark stomped towards me, pulling a pair of handcuffs out of his pocket.
‘Sorry,’ I said, ‘but you’ve got the wrong person.’ I pulled the magic around me into myself and shot the palm of my hand forwards, fire arcing from it and burning the pretend Mark to nothing.
Mark was here for Jake. Somewhere in this jumble of places there was a room or two from Jake’s fears, and Mark was there to take him to it. To torment him forever. Well, bad luck, it wouldn’t work on me.
‘Amy, where are you?’
I reached out with my senses, trying to find something I recognised.
‘Listen,’ I said, placing the correct words in my mind.
‘Please, just stop! Please!’
Amy.
That was Amy’s voice.
I closed my eyes and held onto the connection, stepping forward, trusting it to take me to her. I felt tree branches scrape against my skin, felt the cold chill me, then heat make me sweat. I felt the ground beneath my feet change from one step to the next as I moved through the crazy array of places and times that the creature had squashed together in its realm.
I stopped. I could hear girls jeering, the sound bouncing off something hard, like we were inside a tiled room.
I opened my eyes, I was in a communal toilet. Four cubicles on one side, a line of sinks and mirrors on the other. Four girls were stood in a little semi-circle at the far end, a fifth girl in front of them, her back pressed against the wall as the other girls leaned in at her.
Amy.
‘God you’re fat.’
‘So fat and gross.’
‘Why’d you think Josh would even look at you, never mind fancy you, you dirty skank.’
‘Bitch.’
‘What’s wrong with your clothes?’
‘Mum can’t afford anything decent?’
‘Shut up!’
‘Or what?’
‘What you gonna do, bitch?’
One reached forward and yanked on Amy’s hair.
I outstretched a hand and flames leapt from it, burning the mean girls like they were made of old newspaper, until all that was left were the echoes of their nasty little slurs.
‘Skank.’
‘Bitch.’
‘Lesbo-dyke.’
‘Amy, it’s me, it’s Stella. I’ve come for you.’
Amy shook her head. ‘No, you’re lying. You’re just this place. You’re the monster!’
I didn’t have time to negotiate so I grabbed her and pulled her forward, past the mean girls that were beginning to form again, to give themselves bodies and not just voices.
‘Where you going, bitch?’
‘I’ll fucking kill you if you talk to Josh again, you hear me?’
I pushed the door and stepped out, pulling a struggling Amy after me. We stepped out onto an abandoned train platform.
Amy blinked in surprise then looked at me. ‘Stella? Oh my God, it’s you, isn’t it? It’s really you!’
This platform wasn’t part of her fears, this was the location of some other kid’s worst memory. Pulling her here had snapped Amy out of her own terror.
‘Yes, it’s really me. Me and your Uncle, David, we came up with a plan, and this, well, this is the plan.’
‘How did you get here? You’re not a kid.’
‘Magic. And a ghost.’
‘A ghost!’
‘Yeah.
‘Oh, cool.’
I gave her a shrug. ‘You haven’t met him.’
‘Oi, bender!’
I turned to see Mark walking towards us.
‘Who’s that?’ asked Amy.
‘That’s one of the ghost’s issues, don’t worry about it. Come on.’ I threw a ball of fire at the pretend Mark as we headed for the platform exit.
34
We did our best to ignore what was happening to Alice Travers as we arrived in the back alley and approached the exit I’d created.
‘So, I’ll just wake up, as soon as I step through that door?’
‘Yes.’ I decided to leave out the “hopefully.”
She looked at the door with its flickering exit sign.
‘Are you coming?’
‘No, not yet. There are too many other kids here still. I came here to save all of them, not just you.’
‘But what if… what if the creature notices what you’re doing?’
That was the big question. Sooner or later it would realise something was up and come looking for me.
‘If it comes, I’ll smack it in its stupid, blank face,’ I replied, and smiled.
‘You’re such a bad-arse.’
‘Yes, I am. Not get through the door, your uncle is waiting for you.’
She smiled and opened the portal to a white light beyond. ‘Thanks, Stella. Thanks for saving me.’
She turned and stepped through the door, the light engulfing her before the door slammed shut again.
Okay, one down, a shit-load more to go.
I have no idea how long it took me. No idea if time even existed the same way in the nightmare realm. For all I know I could have been there for seconds in real time.
Or decades.
Every new place was boiling with fear and anger. With pain and hatred. It chipped away at me, little by little, even as I found the children, one by one, and led them to the exit.
‘Are you okay?’ asked one of the kids as I leaned against the wall, trying not to hear the sounds of feet stomping on Alice Travers.
‘Yes, just tired, that’s all. Go through the door. It’s time you woke up.’
And on it went: the image of Mark appearing again and again to torment me, or at least try to. After all, it was Jack’s trauma it was reacting to, not my own. The only affect it had on me was to make me increasingly annoyed as I struggled on.
I found all the eaves kids huddled together. They were the only ones not suspicious of me as I tried to help.
‘We know who you are.’
‘Of course we do.’
‘We’re eaves, we hear lots of things about you, Familiar.’
Finally, the last one, a small human boy named Tom. I found him locked in an abandoned hut in the woods. In this place the birds didn’t tweet, they screamed with the voices of terrified infants. Spiders crawled over every inch of Tom’s body as boys ran circles outside, hitting the walls of the hut with sticks and laughing and hooting. I burned them to cinders then carried the boy into the woods. Into the abandoned train station. The classroom. The caravan. The public toilets. Onwards and onwards through the sites of a thousand tortures.
At last we arrived in the back alley in Acton, a dying Alice Travers behind the bins. I pointed to the exit.
‘Go on. Wake up. Get out of here.’
‘Are you not coming?’
God knows I wanted to. I was exhausted, physically and mentally. This place had pounded against me relentlessly. Trying to find a way in.
‘I can’t. Not yet. I have one more thing to do.’
Tom nodded. He knew what I was staying to finish.
‘He’s coming.’
‘Who?’
‘The monster. The monster man without a face. Can’t you feel him?’
‘He’s coming,’ said Alice, agreeing, her voice a death rattle.
‘This is nothing but a bad dream, Tom. Go and wake up now.’
Tom shook his head. ‘No. This is very, really, real, I’d say. And you can die if it’s real. Don’t die, Miss.’
And with that, he stepped through the door into the bright white and the realm was empty apart from myself and poor Alice Travers. Only one of us was real though. Alice’s cries and battered body were nothing but shadows cast by something that was over a long time ago.
The alley rippled and writhed, reality warping around me, making me stumble in my beaten down state. Making me feel like I might throw up. Like the world surrounding me was a boat on a wild ocean.
‘Children? Where are you, children?’
Alice Travers was by my side, fear on her corpse face. ‘He will be very mad with you. I think he’ll want to do terrible, awful things to you.’
My stomach was telling me to go. To run away and hide. To escape the bad man. But that was just this place. I knew that. Infecting me with fear.
I stood my ground even as the cobbles beneath my feet tried to throw me down.
A tear split in reality at the far end of the alleyway.
It was coming.
He was coming.
Alice ran to hide behind the bins where she’d died.
I clenched my fists as a pretend man without a face stepped out of the tear and into the alley.
‘I’ve looked all over and I can’t find them,’ it said. ‘In every bad place, in every haunted terror. What have you done with my children, Stella Jake?’
35
The creature stood still, arms by its sides, as the two bullies ran into the alley towards Alice Travers to punch and spit and stomp, stomp, stomp.
‘Is the music of my realm not beautiful, Stella Jake?’
‘You’re done, you hear me? You’re a monster, and you’ve just met the woman who finishes the monsters.’
I pulled the strange magic of the alley into myself and thrust out a fist, punching an arc of lethal power in the thing’s direction. I never saw it duck, or jump, or run – in the blink of an eye it just wasn’t where it had been. The magic sailed past and died.
‘My children liked to dance to the music of my home. Or hated it. Or clapped in joy. Or ran in screaming terror. So hard to know or understand for sure. Whatever have you done with them?’
/> ‘I’ve sent them home, you piece of shit.’
I grunted with effort as I unleashed another arc of power, only to see the same thing happen to it. A blink and the creature wasn’t where it had been, and the magic guttered and died.
It tilted its head to one side, ‘I don’t understand. Is that not a home for them? I made it just for them. It only exists to hold them. To haunt them. To torture them. For now I am here, to punish them all.’
‘Stay still!’ I unleashed arc after arc of power, dragging the magic around me into my body and unleashing it over and over, but it didn’t matter what I threw at it, I missed my target every time.
‘Stella Jake, why do you fight so? This is right. Your punishment. All children will come here forever and ever and I will make sure only the very worst happens to them.’
‘Run,’ said Alice Travers from her pillow of blood on the alley floor.
‘I won’t run.’
‘You made yourself a way out? How did you do that, Stella Jake?’
He passed a hand in front of himself.
‘No, no. I’ll take it away.’
I turned to my exit, but all that was there now was a solid brick wall.
‘David? David!’
I tried to concentrate on him, tried to feel his hand in mine, but I couldn’t feel anything. Was I trapped there now? Doomed to suffer in this nightmare realm for all eternity?
‘Children? Where are my children?’
I screamed and threw everything I had in the creature’s direction. The bricks exploded behind where it had been stood a heartbeat before, shards shooting every which way.
I ran from the alley.
The world rushed past me in a jumble as I tried to formulate some sort of plan.
‘David? David, where are you?’
I couldn’t feel him at all, couldn’t hear even the faintest whisper of his voice. I was stuck here, maybe for good.
I skidded to a halt on the abandoned train platform and tried to catch my breath.
‘Where are you running to, Stella Jake?’
The creature was stood at the far end of the platform. It begun to move towards me, closer and closer with each second that passed, never once seeming to actually take a step.
