Chasm

by Stephen Laws

  “What are you trying to say?” asked Candy.

  Gordon moved back to the fire and, shielding his face, tried to pull another firebrand out of the flames.

  “Hey!” snapped Alex. “Leave that alone. We need all the firewood we can get to last us the night out.”

  Gordon was having trouble, so I stepped forward and kicked at a tangled chunk of burning rubbish, until the spar of wood that he wanted was jerked free. Gordon picked it up and looked right into my face. I could see that he was dead scared. Just as scared as me.

  “You come?” he asked.

  I didn’t want to, but I nodded: Yes.

  Gordon picked up the burning wood and walked out towards that figure. I followed.

  “What the hell are you two going to do?” choked Wayne. “You’re bloody mad.”

  “Don’t go out there,” said Annie.

  Gordon looked back, but it was only to see if I was following. I glanced from side to side in the darkness, expecting to see shadows moving out of the night towards us. But there was only the darkness, and the stillness. When we reached the woman’s body, lying face down where it had fallen, Gordon stood for a long time, looking at it. The chunk of burning wood I’d thrown at it was still lying a couple of feet away, still smouldering. When he looked back at me, I said:

  “It’s up to you, Gordon.”

  He handed me the torch. His face was white in the light. Shifting the guitar around from his shoulder to his back, he leaned down and carefully took one of the corpse’s hands. I saw him wince at the touch, saw him grit his teeth as he turned the body over.

  Looking at that white blood-streaked woman’s face, with the dark hair straggling over her forehead and cheeks, like spider’s-web cracks well, I felt myself heave, but I managed to keep it down. Gordon just kneeled there, looking at her face. There was no expression on his own. Then he nodded, and rose to his feet. Without looking at me, he reached for the torch. I gave it to him.

  “You going to tell me what you think, or do I have to guess?”

  “Not her,” said Gordon, with effort. “This. Another woman.”

  “It’s not your aunt?”

  Gordon shook his head. Then he stabbed two fingers at his eyes. “Saw my aunt. Heard…her. But not.”

  “You think…you think…the black stuff that was inside this body just made her look like your aunt?”

  Gordon nodded, eyes gleaming.

  “Here, give me that!” I took the torch from him and looked over to where Stafford lay, checking to make sure that we were still within easy reach of the bonfire. The others were standing silently, watching us.

  “What?” shouted Wayne. His voice was breaking. “What’s going on?”

  “Come back to the fire,” called Lisa. “It’s not safe.”

  “Nowhere’s safe,” I muttered—and then I looked down at Stafford. His body was in the same position as the woman’s. Also face down, arms outstretched in the pose he’d ended up in after the black stuff had exploded like a geyser from his mouth. Now I realised that whereas this body was wearing a jacket that was almost the same colour as Stafford’s that morning, this was a different jacket altogether. The hair was similar, but not the same. I didn’t treat the body with the same respect I’d seen Gordon show. Holding the torch high, I stuck my foot under an armpit and heaved. The body rolled and flopped on to its back.

  This had been a man the same size, shape and age as Stafford. And I knew then that he’d been chosen for that very reason. The real Stafford had been just too messed up for the benefit of tonight’s floor show. Maybe it was the same with Gordon’s aunt. This man was in a hell of a mess, but at least he was in one piece. His shirt was stained black-red; his fingers were torn and ragged, as if he’d clawed his way out of the rubble somewhere. But he’d served his purpose. The black stuff, whatever it was, had somehow been able to make his face look like Stafford.

  Gordon was looking hard at me when I turned away.

  “The same,” I said.

  Gordon nodded.

  We headed back to the others.

  “Well?” asked Alex impatiently.

  “We all saw people we thought we knew,” I said. “All heard them saying things only we knew. Am I right?”

  “Gas,” said Alex. “It’s the gas.”

  “No…” Gordon was vigorously shaking his head.

  “Gordon’s right. There was no gas attack. The things we’re seeing…well, it’s nearly them.”

  “Nearly them?” asked Damon. “What the fuck is that supposed to mean?”

  “It means that the black stuff—the stuff Alex and Candy saw, the stuff that was out there just now—got into those dead bodies and made them come here. Gordon thought he saw his aunt. We looked. It wasn’t her. Same with the other body. It was made to look like Stafford, the head teacher at Burleigh High. But it was only someone the same age, the same height. I reckon the black stuff did the same for everyone else. Made them see people they knew.”

  “It was him!” snapped Candy. “The man we saw in the off-licence. It was HIM!”

  “The man I saw,” said Lisa. The boy had been moving between Lisa and Annie ever since the horror had begun, burying his face first in the folds of Lisa’s skirt, then pulling Annie’s arms around to cover his head and face. When Lisa spoke, he clung to her more tightly. “It was my ex-husband. He doesn’t live in Edmonville. He lives with my two sons on the other side of the country. Annie saw him, knows what he looks like. But he couldn’t possibly be here. What we saw only looked like him.”

  “Look…look…” Alex appeared to be on the verge of exploding with anger. “That doesn’t explain the other stuff. How could…he…it…they know things about us? How could they know things that only go on in our heads? That’s not possible.”

  “Lots of things are not possible,” I said. “Think about what’s happened. About what’s happening here, Alex. What the hell’s happened to Edmonville, for a start? How come we’re stranded on this great chunk of rock? Look at all the other peaks and crags out there. Is that possible in real life? Can it really happen? No use saying ‘No, it can’t’, ’cause it’s there! Right in front of our eyes.”

  “Why…doesn’t…someone…COME!” yelled Candy, like the booze was finally starting to wear off, and no way was anyone going out there in the dark to the mini-mart to get more for her. Her voice broke on that last word and she collapsed to her knees, sobbing.

  And that’s when the noises began.

  At first it seemed as if that word…“Come”…had somehow echoed, even though there was something flat and hollow about the way sound…well, sounded, ever since the ’quake. It seemed to hang in the air and then drift out into the darkness and come back. Bloody weird. And everyone began looking around in the night, beyond the light from the bonfire, when we all realised at the same time that it wasn’t an echo at all. It was someone moaning.

  More than that.

  It was the sound of lots of people, all out there somewhere, all moaning.

  It’s difficult to put this across, but…well, you know the way that kids can pretend to be ghosts and do that corny moaning kind of sound. You know, really comical ghostly sounds. Well, the voices were like that. But there was absolutely and utterly nothing funny about it. The voices were deliberately trying to scare us. And no matter how hard we strained to look into the darkness, we couldn’t see a single person. Maybe the corpses were back again, but if they were, they stayed well away from the light and in the dark. And, one by one, the chorus was being joined by another wailing voice, then another, and another. All moaning and wailing, like some kind of crazy wind.

  It chilled me. It made me feel sick with fear.

  Alex rushed to the fire, yanked another chunk of burning wood from it and threw it out into the night in a blazing arc. A cloud of sparks whumped on impact with the ground. But it didn’t reveal anything. We all crowded closer to the fire. The boy was sobbing, and both Lisa and Annie were trying their hardest to comfort him. Ev
eryone’s face looked white with fear. Those wailing voices reminded me of something else now. Something I’d seen and heard on a television documentary years ago.

  They sounded like timber wolves out there, all calling to each other when they knew that their prey was cornered.

  “Christ,” said Wayne, and he dropped to his knees. “What are we going to do?”

  “Stay close to the fire,” said Annie. There was nothing shaky about her voice and she looked…well, defiant. I remembered the way she’d acted first when those dead people had appeared, pulling a torch out of the fire. I could feel myself pulling around just by looking at her. “They can’t stand the fire.” She couldn’t possibly know that was absolutely true, even though we’d seen how the black stuff had reacted when the firebrands had been thrown at the dead people. But, just looking at her face, I believed it was true.

  Gordon walked away from the fire, just a half-dozen steps or so, and with this grim look on his face. Then he swung the guitar around from his back, got it into position to play. We could only look at him, wondering what was going on.

  His hand flashed in a downward stabbing motion across the strings, making three loud chords which seemed to hang in the air. We all just stood there, looking at him. It was like…well, like he was taunting whatever was out there making those moaning noises.

  And then, after a pause, Gordon began to play.

  Wayne and Damon gawped at him. We all stood and listened, while Gordon played this piece of music I’d never heard before. Sort of Spanish-sounding, and angry; really angry. I’d never heard anything like it. And just as the sound of our voices had been somehow flattened in the night, it seemed that Gordon’s music was somehow…well, I don’t know the word to use, really…except that the music sounded boosted. Maybe by the anger and the defiance in Gordon’s playing. His eyes were catching the firelight as he stood there, like there was something burning inside him, and it was coming out through his fingers, into the chords and out into the night where the things might be crouching, or prowling or lying in wait.

  Suddenly we couldn’t hear the moaning, keening voices any more.

  We could only hear the music.

  And, somehow, the music was us.

  We’d been traumatised, nearly killed, escaped death in a dozen different ways. We had lost people close to us, and had been waiting for rescue that looked like it was never going to come. The dead had come back to life to haunt us. And the Black Stuff, whatever it was, wanted to suck the life out of us. By rights, we should just be lying face down on the ground, totally fucked up by fear and terror and exhaustion, and just letting ourselves be taken by whatever it was out there in the night that wanted us.

  But not now. Not right at this moment, as Gordon played his beautiful, angry music, and I could feel my own anger at what was happening to us coming right out of his guitar and stabbing out into the darkness. I could see the defiance in Annie and Lisa’s eyes. Candy had risen to her feet. She stood next to Alex, the pair of them staring off into the night. They were together now, maybe for only a while, but together. Wayne and Damon just goggled at Gordon, and they weren’t terrified any more. The boy had stopped crying as Lisa held him tight.

  I don’t know how long he played. Five minutes. Ten. Maybe half an hour. I just don’t know, because something happened to time then.

  Finally, Gordon finished—with the same flourish of chords that had started his music, the final chord hanging in the air. He looked exhausted. Beads of sweat on his forehead were glinting in the firelight.

  And the howling voices had gone.

  The wolves were no longer out there in the dark.

  That music—Gordon’s music, our music—had scared them back to wherever in hell they’d come from.

  Now there was only the crackling sound of flames from the fire behind us.

  The heat felt good on my back.

  No one spoke.

  And we stayed by the fire, and took turns to sleep, until the first shades of grey began to dissipate the night and bring back—grey outline by grey outline—the silence and the emptiness of our new, desolate world.

  Chapter Three

  The Ordeal of Juliet DeLore

  Juliet snapped awake.

  In panic, she clutched at the edge of the desk to make sure that it was still hard up against the door. Wildly, she looked around the storeroom, but nothing had changed. How the hell had she fallen asleep, knowing that Trevor was sitting on the other side of that door?

  There was a scuffling sound from the other side.

  Juliet clambered to her feet and braced one foot against the desk, raising the crowbar in readiness. Now she could hear sounds of exertion. A final scrape and clatter. Then low laughter.

  “Trevor…”

  “Did you enjoy your little snooze, my pet?”

  “What are you doing?”

  “I knew you were sleeping, you know. Could have bust in there any time I wanted. But I didn’t want to, did I? Got better things in mind.”

  “You can’t keep me here for ever.”

  “Wanna bet?”

  Suddenly there was a crash against the door. Juliet cried out, bracing her foot harder against the desk-edge. Trevor began hammering at the door; repeated, methodical blows.

  “I’ve told you, Trevor! You come in here and I’ll smash your head in.”

  “Who…wants…to…come…in?” said Trevor, each word followed by another blow. His voice was muffled because he was speaking through gritted teeth. There were six nails in his mouth. The voice in his head had told him that Juliet was sleeping, and that he could proceed with the next stage of the plan. Quietly, he had slipped away, back into the supermarket, and found to his delight that the hardware section hadn’t vanished into the pit. He’d selected a hilly kitted-out toolbox with hammer and nails. Next, he had picked up half a dozen oak shelves; nice veneer, very tasteful. When he began to nail the second shelf across the door frame, Juliet suddenly realised what he was doing.

  “Trevor, you miserable little…”

  “Sticks and stones again, Juliet. My, if I’d only known how foul-mouthed you were when I first met you, I don’t think I would have let our association continue.”

  Juliet lunged forward and slammed the crowbar against the door.

  On the other side, Trevor flinched back—and then burst out laughing.

  He continued with his task, nailing the shelves one by one across the door. He laughed again when Juliet began to yell at him from the storeroom, a barrage of anger fuelled by fear.

  At last he dropped the hammer into the toolbox and backed away two steps to survey his handiwork.

  “There, all neat and tidy.”

  “Trevor, you shit!”

  Good, said the voice in his head. Now, come. Night is here and I have things to show you.

  Trevor suddenly realised that it had grown dark while he had been enjoying himself; he just hadn’t noticed. Like when he’d been a kid, playing outside, and suddenly he’d hear his mother calling that it was time to come in and—look at that!—it had turned into evening and he’d never even seen it coming.

  “Got to go for a while, Juliet. Now, you be good. Tell you what. Why don’t you see if you can break out of there with the crowbar? Bet you can’t.”

  Smiling, Trevor descended the stairs, making no attempt this time to mask the crunching of broken glass and debris underfoot. Immediately there was a banging on the storeroom door. Frenzied and repeated. He chuckled at the sounds of Juliet’s cries of effort, feeling as if something in his head that had been hidden for a long time was now free and unrestrained. Idly kicking tins from his path, Trevor made his way to the bread section, and the ragged cliff-edge of the chasm beyond.

  The grey had become black. This time, standing on the edge, he did not feel the giddiness previously caused by those impenetrable depths. Instead, there was just a black void; and somewhere down there, the Voice calling to him. It was as if the world ended here. It was a good feeling. Trevor
felt that he’d reached an important point in his life. The destruction, the earthquake, whatever; it was all the doing of the Voice, and it was an end to his old life. In that black void below there were limitless possibilities. He could feel it with a real sense of elation.

  Do you know how easily I could have taken you? The Voice seemed very near, even though Trevor knew instinctively that it was also a long way down, at the bottom of the chasm. How easily I have taken others, since the First Day? The Voice went on. Trevor nodded.

  “Did you see the way I took care of that little shit from Central Office?”

  I did, Trevor. That’s why I’m able to talk to you. That’s why I haven’t taken you, the way I’ve taken the others. Because you’re very special. You have great and hidden talents inside. You’ve just never had a chance to develop them, to use them. Use those talents now, Trevor. Give me pleasure in the bitch’s torment. Be creative.

  “Please…can I see you?”

  There was silence now, and Trevor worried that he’d spoiled everything.

  “I can hear you,” he went on, now unsure. “It’s just that…I need to see your face.”

  I have many faces, Trevor. Which face is it you want to see?

  Trevor struggled to respond, not understanding.

  There was laughter in his head. A dry, brittle, crackling sound.

  “There’s something about your voice. Something deep down, inside my head. Something vaguely…”

  Familiar?

  “Yeah, familiar. I can’t explain. Don’t really understand.”

  You don’t need to understand, Trevor. But you do want to see? You want to look on my faces?

  “Yes…”

  The Voice didn’t respond, but Trevor was aware of movement. Again, even though he knew that the Voice was physically deep in the pit, it was still also very close inside his head. Even now, the Voice was catapulting up the nearside of the Chasm like a speeding elevator. Gathering speed as it came, racing up the ragged cliff-face; swarming up over ragged fissures of stone and clay.

  Trevor stood trembling on the cliff-edge, knowing that something great was about to happen; something that he had been waiting for all his life. As the Voice came swarming up towards him from the pit like a racing black cloud, he could feel a door opening inside his head. He’d never been able to fully open the door. Sometimes it had opened a crack. Once, when he was ten years old, and for no reason at all he’d shoved a kid into the canal. He still remembered the thrashing of water, and then the stillness with only the fishing rod floating on the surface. And then the door opening a little again when he’d overheard his father reading out the item in the newspaper about the local child who’d drowned. Again, when he was fifteen, the girl in the park. The door edging open again when he’d seen the Identikit picture depicting a face that was absolutely nothing like him at all. There had been many other occasions over the years, but the door would only open so far and no more. At last, with the Darkness below almost out of the pit, he could feel the door opening wide to the wall. At last, he would find the real Trevor Blake, the Trevor who’d struggled to be free all these years.