Chasm

by Stephen Laws

  “The hell with it,” I said. “I’m going back to bed.”

  “Breakfast in bed in the morning, sir?” asked Annie.

  “Of course,” I said, trying to adopt a snotty accent, and failing completely. “And don’t forget my early morning call.”

  “When Hell freezes over,” said Lisa, and we were all laughing again. Candy was awake now, looking at us as if we’d all gone mad. Perhaps we had.

  I headed for my room. Annie was confident about the power set-up, but she and Lisa decided to go and check in the garage. Perhaps it was the laughter and the lights outside, but the boy seemed confident enough now to let them go without running after them. He sat next to Gordon, fascinated by his guitar, and Gordon let him pluck at the remaining strings. He still wouldn’t talk. Still wouldn’t come out of that place inside his head where he had been living since the day of the ’quake. But the smile on his face looked good. Damon remained out of it, sleeping on the sofa, and as I headed upstairs Alex carried Candy to their room. Gordon indicated that he’d stay up with the boy until the others came back.

  We were all of us too exhausted to even think about some kind of “watch”. Part of me almost suggested it, but the laughter about the “leader” thing had taken the sting out of everything. If no one else thought about it, I was going to say nothing. Maybe it was foolish, what with Trevor out there somewhere in the extension. But I had to take them at their word, that he was trussed up and safely stowed away. And…I don’t know…just raising the issue now was like putting a damper on the good feeling we’d experienced. I went back to “my” room.

  I suppose I slept as soon as my head touched the pillow, bathed in that wonderful, strangely comforting orange light.

  Some time later, God knows how much later, I was suddenly awake and alert.

  Fear stabbed through me.

  The light was still on, but I glanced around the room, listening for that sound the Vorla always made when it was near. Like a black sea on the move; like a hundred thousand mad, whispering voices.

  “I’m sorry,” said the silhouette in the doorway.

  It was Juliet.

  “Oh, God. Yeah. Juliet…”

  She remained there, saying nothing else.

  I sat up, groaning, waiting for her to go on.

  She brushed a long strand of that back-lit golden hair from her face. I couldn’t see her expression, only her silhouette.

  “What’s wrong?” I asked. “Are you all right?”

  “Jay.”

  “Yes?”

  “I don’t want to be alone tonight.”

  Neither of us spoke for a while.

  Then I said: “Neither do I.”

  She pushed the door closed when she came in.

  And I found something then, and for the rest of that night, that I’d never even known I’d lost. Something about the real me. Something that I was able to share, and give, and I knew that from then on I would never be the same person again.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Night Visitors

  Annie and Lisa had fixed up a room on the ground floor for themselves, giving them good access to the basement and the generator, should they need it. A bed had also been set up in there, in the corner, for the boy. Candy had glared at them throughout, clearly feeling that it wasn’t right that he should be sharing the same room. But nothing had been said.

  The others had already gone to bed when Annie and Lisa decided to check on the garage across the street, leaving Gordon and the boy on the sofa. The boy seemed happier, more aware, than usual. Gordon allowed him to pick at the guitar, becoming lost in his thoughts, now examining the room and hardly believing that it had been only a matter of days since everyone’s world had been turned upside down. He couldn’t bring himself to think of his aunt, or of what had happened to her when the dead had returned to life in Edmonville. Had she remained trapped down there in the rubble of their former home, or had she been forced to climb out and join the others? Gordon shut down on those thoughts again. The pain was too vivid.

  But you’re out of prison, Gordon, another part of him seemed to say. Despite the fear and the horror and all the nightmare happenings, you’re out of that bedroom now. This may not be the world you remember, but you aren’t sitting every night with the curtains closed, picking at those guitar strings. And for the first time, the things you’ve done here have made a difference.

  He’d remembered the nights they’d thrown stones at the windows when he’d practised his “uncool” music. And then he remembered the night by the bonfire, when he’d put everything of himself into playing his guitar at the horror hidden in the dark. All his fear, all the loneliness, all the frustrated emotion that had led him to taking up the guitar in the first place. Something had happened then; something that he wasn’t sure about. Perhaps for the first time the monkey at the typewriter really had performed a work of genius.

  Gordon heard Annie and Lisa coming back, and looked down to see that the boy had fallen asleep; slumped against him with the guitar in his lap.

  The generators were fine. Outside, the streets surrounding the boarding house were bright as day. Lisa smiled when she saw the boy, carefully lifting him from the sofa as Gordon retrieved his guitar.

  “Lookout,” said Gordon, and pointed at the window.

  “Okay,” said Annie. “I’ll spell you in…what? Three hours?”

  Gordon nodded, and the two women quietly moved to their room at the end of the ground-floor corridor, carefully edging the boy around the door and into his bed. Gordon watched them go, waving once as the door closed. He thought about Candy’s reaction to Annie and Lisa’s relationship, which was hostile to say the least. Was it the loss of her own child that had made her so bitter about them? Couldn’t she see that the boy had clung to Lisa and Annie as his only hope? He was lost somewhere in his own mind as a result of what had happened to his parents. The two women had shown nothing but protection and affection. Gordon moved to the window, refusing to think about it further lest he be judging Candy in the same way that she had judged them. He picked up her empty brandy bottle and dropped it into the bin beside the window, looking out. The glare from the streetlights and the floodlights hid everything of the night beyond the street outside. Was the Vorla out there somewhere, lapping at the edges of the light like a great black sea?

  Gordon returned to the sofa, put his guitar in his lap and looked at the dent in the base where he had laid it across Trevor Blake’s head. Were Annie and Lisa really sure about their work on those generators? How could they be so confident that the lights wouldn’t suddenly go out and the Vorla wouldn’t come sweeping down that street, engulfing them like some great black tidal wave? They needed a contingency plan, just in case.

  Thinking these things, aware of the danger, of the need for vigilance, Gordon, like Jay in the room above him, was instantly asleep. It was a gap in their plans for protection, but exhaustion had taken its toll not only on their physical state, but on everyone’s mental resources. They must sleep, even if the Chasm should rise up and devour them all.

  Gordon dreamed, but his dreams were formless and he could make no sense of them. Taunting faces when he was a child. Keeping the pain and the tears inside. Voices, yelling: “Dummy!”

  He was cold.

  Was it the cold that suddenly woke him up? He could feel the hair on the nape of his neck. Felt a cold chill in his shoulders, under his armpits, down his spine. And in that emergence from sleep, he suddenly became aware that something was moving in the room.

  Something that had stopped moving as soon as he shuffled on the sofa.

  Still barely awake, Gordon realised that the feeling he was experiencing was not from the cold. It was warm in here. The temperature seemed to have remained at a constant level ever since the day of the earthquake, now he came to think of it. No, this feeling was something else. Part of his unconscious, sleeping mind—the instinctive part—was telling him not to wake up; that he should return to sleep, not connect w
ith whatever was going on around him. But it was too late now.

  Because Gordon knew that the cold feeling was fear.

  There was something with him in the room, and even though his conscious mind did not know what it was, a primal part of him was reacting instinctively.

  Gordon slowly opened his eyes.

  A naked child, about two years old, was crouching on the windowsill opposite him. It was a boy, with ash-blond curly hair, and bright blue glittering eyes. Something about the child’s eyes, something about his expression, seemed almost adult. He was frozen in that crouching posture, on his way in or out of the opened window, and it had been Gordon’s shuffling from sleep that had alerted him and made him pause. Gordon could not move. This was the same sort of child that Candy and Alex had seen in the mini-mart, the same kind of child that had killed Wayne.

  The boy raised an eyebrow, as if waiting for Gordon to do something.

  Gordon kept still, hardly daring to breathe.

  The boy cocked his head to one side, and then looked quickly over to the other side of the room. Moving only his eyes, Gordon now saw what the boy was looking at.

  There was another child, crouching on the television set.

  It was a girl, perhaps slightly younger than the boy. But for that she could have been his twin sister. The same curling ash-blond hair, the same glittering eyes. Her attention was also riveted on Gordon, and from her position, delicately balanced there like a cat, he could see the bony ridges on both her shoulders, as if something were growing there beneath the skin.

  Something scampered over Gordon’s feet. Involuntarily, he flinched.

  And suddenly the room was filled with snarling, naked children baring sharp, pointed teeth.

  A three-year-old boy was on the back of the sofa, not two feet from where Gordon sat, glaring at him. Even with that look of ferocity, the sight of those savage teeth, there was something indescribably beautiful about him; about all the children who had crept into the living room through the window and had been silently examining the room and its contents before Gordon had awoken. Directly in front of him, on the living-room carpet, was another two-year-old boy—green eyes, curled yellow hair. He stood swaying, arms at his sides; ready to leap at Gordon’s throat if he should show any sign of attacking them. Frozen on the sofa, Gordon’s eyes moved warily around the room. There were perhaps a dozen children in here, perched on the table, clinging to the backs of chairs. Physically no younger than eighteen months, no older than three, perhaps four at most. But all of them possessing the same strange feral agility and instincts.

  Something flashed in the air, too rapid to register.

  The next instant, a two-year-old girl was swinging from the light fixture overhead, glaring down at him.

  Behind him, Gordon was aware of further movement, but dared not turn around to look. Something was climbing up the back of the sofa, was now balancing on the edge and shuffling forward to sniff in his ear. Heart hammering, he felt wetness there as it sniffed cautiously, then retreated…sniffed, and retreated. When it edged back to the boy crouched on the end of the sofa, Gordon looked to see that it was another boy, perhaps eighteen months old. The older boy put his arms around him, and the younger boy snuggled up close to his chest, looking back at Gordon. The movement and expression were at once like the behaviour of some hybrid human-ape, and also intensely human. Their attention remained fixed on him. Now he could see that the look of ferocity had softened. Could it be that they meant him no harm? Could they be as frightened of him as he was of them?

  Gordon moved his hands in his lap.

  Instantly, the twelve children hissed.

  He was motionless again, waiting.

  The eighteen-month-old pulled away from the older child and began to shuffle warily along the sofa towards him once more. Gordon waited for it to come near, for the sniffing to begin again. But suddenly the child hopped down on to the sofa beside him. Gordon’s guitar had fallen there while he slept. The child hit the fretboard with both feet, making a jangled chord ring in the air as it bounced to the carpet. Instantly alert, full defensive ferocity on every face, each child’s attention swung from Gordon to the guitar.

  The children began to move around the room, the guitar remaining their centre of attention. To Gordon, it seemed that they were circling like a pack, ready to attack. He was forgotten now as the pack paused and waited for further sounds, perhaps waiting for this strange thing to move. The child who had swayed on the carpet before Gordon, as if daring him to move, suddenly darted forward and slapped at the guitar on the sofa. It shifted, but there was no sound. The children circled, and waited.

  Afterwards, Gordon would be unable to understand why he did what he did next. Every instinct told him to keep still and not antagonise the creatures, given what had happened to Wayne. But the next moment he found his hand creeping slowly over the sofa to the guitar. This time the children did not react to his movements. The guitar remained their sole focus of attention. When he reached the remaining strings, Gordon plucked one.

  The children flinched, looked at each other, and then back at the guitar.

  Gordon plucked another string.

  This time they did not move.

  Gordon began to pick out a tune: “Baa-Baa Black Sheep”.

  Eyes wide, entranced, the feral children watched and listened.

  Slowly, Gordon leaned down and edged the guitar on to his lap with his other hand, plucking out the tune as he did so. Sweat was running down his face, trickling down his back. He was convinced that if he made one awkward or unexpected movement, the pack would fall on him with their sharp teeth bared. With two strings missing, Gordon slowly and carefully reached for the chord combinations available to him—and began to play.

  It was one of his “mentor’s” pieces: “Ninna Nanna Sul Nero”, which some music reviewers had said was too close in style to Ravel’s “Pavane (For a Dead Polish Princess)” for comfort. Since Gordon had never heard the “Pavane” he didn’t much care. So he played anyway: a gentle, melodic, very sad lullaby.

  The children watched and listened with wide eyes and open mouths.

  The little girl on the light fixture spun slowly upside down, hanging by her legs and listening.

  And suddenly, these were no longer feral children who could tear a human to pieces in moments. They were children, entranced by the sounds they were hearing. Behaving like children who had never in their lives heard music before.

  Gordon lost track of time. It seemed as if he were playing for hours.

  His fingers were aching. But he feared what would happen when he stopped.

  Later, when noises came from Annie and Lisa’s room, as Annie prepared to relieve Gordon’s watch duty, the children suddenly became alert again. Attention fixed on the door at the end of the corridor, they flashed through the air, over the furniture and towards the window with an incredibly fluidity of motion and eerie grace. Pausing only briefly to look back at Gordon and his guitar, they slipped silently out of the window, dropping down out of sight into the floodlit night. The light fixture gave a quiet rattle and spun violently as the little girl vanished, reappearing on top of the television set. She glanced at him curiously, then cocked her head to look at the guitar, as if seeing it from a different angle might answer some of her questions. Then she vanished in a flurry of air. A slight bump on the window glass, a brief fogging as if something had breathed there…and now the children were all gone.

  Gordon stopped playing.

  The bedroom door opened and Annie slipped out, careful not to disturb Lisa or the boy. Gordon kept looking at the window.

  “That was nice,” said Annie, as she approached, and she meant it.

  Gordon nodded, unable to speak.

  “Time to get some sleep.”

  He nodded again. Picking up his guitar, he walked up the stairs to his room like a sleepwalker. The lights were on when he entered, as they remained on in every room. For a moment, he paused on the threshold, expecting t
hat the children would all be in here somewhere, waiting. But the room was empty. When he lay down, and put his head on the pillow, Gordon didn’t know how he’d ever sleep again with all the questions that buzzed through his mind.

  Instantly, he slept.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Revelations

  They paused at the doorway to the extension, and although Jay was the only one not knowing what to expect, he could feel and share their anxiety. “Morning” had come, and it was the time for answers.

  Alex stepped forward, and unlocked the door. He didn’t want the others to know just how badly frightened he’d been by his encounter with Trevor Blake. He remembered the way that he…that it…had hissed in his face as they had fought on the cliff-top. He remembered his first real look at that horrifying, mutilated mask; so close to his own that the very nearness of it threatened to rob him of his strength. After Gordon had delivered his top ten hit, they had trussed him up straight away, with the rope they’d used to haul Jay and Juliet up from the mast. But Alex still couldn’t forget the touch of Trevor’s skin, even the feel of him through his ripped and bloodied clothes. Although it still looked like human skin, it felt as if he were touching something utterly inhuman. Something dry and cool. Like the time he’d once touched a snake’s skin. They’d left him bound beside the smouldering bonfire. But he’d writhed and twisted, trying to get free. Annie had volunteered at one stage to give him water. Like an animal, he’d tried to bite her hand. While they’d ministered to Jay and looked after the newcomer, Juliet, Trevor had behaved as if he were in agony throughout. From then on, his one remaining eye remained screwed shut, as he writhed in pain. For the next two days it had been the same, until they’d found the Rendezvous and locked him in this extension.

  They entered the small corridor that led to the three rooms which comprised the extension. Lisa stayed at the main door with the boy, as the others clustered around Alex. Alex paused only briefly, making sure that everyone was ready. No one spoke. He unlocked the door.