Chasm

by Stephen Laws

  Shrieking, arms covering his black and steaming head, Daddie-Paul began to melt atop the bubbling black column.

  And Jay O’Connor walked out of the inferno, straight towards him.

  “Oh my God,” said Juliet. “Oh my God, Annie. Look…”

  He was no more than a silhouette against the blazing inferno behind him.

  But there was no mistaking the way he walked, the way he held himself.

  He was holding a shotgun in one hand as he came, its barrel pointed at the ground.

  Like Daddie-Paul, he had been raised from the dead; raised from the Chasm.

  The Caffney brothers had cowered from the sight of their father screaming atop the black wave. Now they followed Daddie-Paul’s agonised gaze to the figure who was emerging from the flames. Suddenly, there was no more screaming. The kids in the ruins were no longer running or hiding. They were frozen like the others, watching mesmerised as the figure walked calmly from the flames towards them.

  “The Vorla isn’t all-powerful,” said Jay, his voice carrying above the raging furnace behind him. The blazing building began to crumble and disintegrate, falling in upon itself. “It’s been lying to you from the very start. You saw what happened. They threw me into the Chasm—but I’m back. And I’m telling you this: the Vorla is Evil. That’s what it is and what it does. We denied it, and so can you!”

  “Daddie-Paul!” screamed Henry Caffney, on the verge of insanity. Patrick and Don-Paul flinched from him as he stared back up at the dripping black figure of his father.

  With fire in front and now behind, the Vorla was in a torment of agony. Hissing and thundering, it boiled and thrashed in the Chasm. Henry watched his father’s face melt and dissolve, saw his body come apart in flowing black rivulets. The column sagged and began to fall back. Now Daddie-Paul was a shapeless black lump of tar. The column vanished beneath the cliff-edge, the head of the Caffney clan now completely reabsorbed into the hideous black mass.

  Henry looked back into the flames.

  Jay was still coming on.

  Henry raised the automatic pistol that he had been using to snap shots off at the survivors by the petrol plant, and pointed it directly at him.

  Jay was still coming. As he walked, he swung the shotgun up and pointed it directly at Henry.

  Sweating, his face contorted, Henry’s gun hand wavered.

  “Go on, then, Henry,” said Jay. “Try it.”

  Trembling, Henry pulled the trigger.

  His gun was empty.

  Moaning, he dropped it to the ground. Unable to confront this dead man from the fire, crazed by the apparent second death and defeat of his father and the loss of the sister who was bearing his child, Henry whirled in the other direction. Shrieking, he directed all his insane hatred at the figures who were standing by their own pitiful fire on the other side of the bridge, flinging the empty gun at them. It dropped out of sight into the Chasm, where the Vorla had once more taken refuge, just below the flickering fire-line, seething and boiling in black torment.

  Shrieking again, Henry charged across the bridge.

  Patrick and Don-Paul were swept along in their elder brother’s blood rage. Echoing his cries of savagery, they followed, intent on tearing the others limb from limb.

  Now Jay was running after them. Unable to use the shotgun for fear of hitting the others, he hurtled across the rubble-strewn ground as Henry reached the other side of the Chasm. Patrick stumbled and fell on the bridge as Don-Paul jumped over him. Suddenly, there was a flailing jumble of confusion as the brothers reached the other side. Jay saw Henry lunging at Annie as she reared from the shadows, holding the shotgun like a club. He heard the stock of the gun connect with Henry’s shoulder, heard him scream again as they both fell, clawing and thrashing. There was a flurry of blond hair as Patrick seized one of the figures and they both went down.

  “Juliet!” yelled Jay, and now he was sprinting over the bridge.

  Below him, tentacles of stinking black ooze flopped and writhed from the surface of the Vorla, whiplashing at his legs as he ran. But the light was too much; the tentacles hissed, steamed and fell back into the blackness as Jay leapt from the bridge.

  He was back!

  Juliet was alive!

  With an anger that was at once fierce and vengeful but also controlled with an ice-like determination, Jay ran at Patrick Caffney. He’d pinned Juliet to the ground, dashing the steel pipe from her hands. His hands were fastened in her hair as he beat her head against the ground. Jay brought all the impetus from his leap off the bridge into a kick which caught Patrick in his midriff, snapping two ribs and hurling him away from Juliet. He rolled in agony, clutching his side as Juliet struggled to her feet. Whirling, Jay cracked the shotgun butt down against the side of Henry Caffney’s head. It didn’t stop him. He was strangling Annie. Lisa had him by the hair, yanking back hard. Jay positioned himself, brought the butt down squarely in his face. Grunting, blood spraying from his nostrils, Henry fell back.

  In a paroxysm of fury, two dozen black tendrils snaked out of the Chasm and fastened on the bridge. Already weakened in its moorings, it shuddered as the others whirled back to look. With a grinding crash, black tendrils already dissolving and steaming in the light, the bridge was wrenched from the cliff-edge on both sides. It disintegrated as it fell into the darkness. Now they were trapped on this crag.

  Don-Paul Caffney flew through the air, taking Jay by the shoulders.

  The shotgun flew from his hands as he went down under Don-Paul’s weight. They rolled on the ground, gouging and clawing. Juliet stumbled to her feet, ran to help, and the next moment Henry Caffney had seized her leg and dragged her down.

  Somewhere, Tracey Caffney was screaming.

  And another shot from the microlight kicked up a showering clod of earth as Patrick joined the fight once more, seizing Lisa by the throat. Suddenly, the remaining buckets of fuel that Alex had retrieved from the plant were clattering over in the struggle, dark-glinting pools of fuel were flowing towards the fire, and everyone was covered in the stuff.

  Candy had dragged Alex away from the fighting. His legs were smoking. Now she began to shake him with fuel-blistered hands, trying to wake him.

  The microlight buzzed overhead, momentarily visible in the flames.

  Another shot screaming in the night.

  Alex could not be woken.

  “Oh, Alex…oh God, Alex. Please don’t be dead.”

  When she touched his face, he was cold.

  Henry Caffney screamed as he pulled Juliet on top of him. Quickly she found his eyes, was digging her thumbs into the sockets, her blond hair shrouding his face as he fought to throw her off. Patrick was groaning and clutching his face where Lisa had kicked him as she managed to pull away from his grasp. Jay and Don-Paul were still rolling in the fuel, trying to reach the fallen shotgun.

  Candy stroked Alex’s hair gently, as if she had all the time in the world. Somewhere in the darkness, the microlight buzzed and whined as it completed another turn. Simon Caffney was ready to make another pass.

  The spilled fuel reached the fire.

  Several trails were ignited at once, all flaring and racing to where the figures struggled in the shadows. Lisa saw what was happening, kicked herself free of Patrick once more when he lunged at her, and seized Juliet round the middle, dragging her from Henry Caffney. But it was as if Juliet had the blood rage too; she did not want to be separated from this madman. She wanted to blind him; wanted to punish him for the terror and the misery that he had inflicted. Then Jay found his feet under Don-Paul and kicked out hard. The impact flung him to his feet. Arms pin-wheeling, he tottered away from him.

  Just as two of the converging fuel trails reached his feet.

  Time back-flipped again for Jay. Because now he was surely back at the beginning of the nightmare, still in the meat mart with the living dead, watching as they were transformed into staggering human torches.

  Instantly, his body covered in the fuel, Don-Paul Caffney
became a blundering mass of flames. He shrieked only once before the fire invaded his throat and burned out his vocal cords. His arms flailed and beat at his body as a lake of fire erupted all around him.

  Lisa pulled Juliet free and they staggered away as Henry got to his feet.

  Jay followed them, dodging quickly aside as Don-Paul blundered blindly in his direction, arms held wide. Pools of fuel erupted around him with every step. Suddenly, fire was surging and leaping all around them. Jay leaped over a burning stream—and there was Juliet at last.

  They clung together as if they never wanted to let go again.

  They had felt it first out on that dislodged radio station mast. Two strangers in terrible danger, clinging together with an intimacy that defied any rational explanation. The reality of that intimacy constantly tested by the hideous dangers in which they had been placed; pushed to the limit by their separation and the near certainty that they had been separated for ever by death. But both were alive, and together again, and in worse danger than ever before. In that brief moment, clinging together, they felt that first surge of wild love again and knew instinctively that they couldn’t get out of this situation alive. But they were together again. And if they had to die, then at least it would be together.

  They turned to watch in horror as Don-Paul Caffney blundered straight into the petrol canister. He pounded and thrashed at the base of the container, as if his blazing arms could somehow beat a hole in the steel and extinguish his agony. But now he was falling to his knees; his body crumpling, sagging and finally sprawling…over the oxy-acetylene cylinders. Suddenly, as the fire ravaged and consumed his body, something began to hiss beneath him as he twitched feebly. Already peppered and punctured by Annie’s shotgun blast, the cylinders were slow-leaking. At any moment now, they would ignite.

  Henry and Patrick were immobilised once more, staring at the blazing mass that had once been Don-Paul. Lakes of fire were burning all around them. Jay looked for the shotgun, saw it lying in a burning pool and knew that it was no good to them now.

  “Where’s Alex…?” He looked around for him, and saw Candy cradling his smoking shape as they both huddled in the darkness. They hurried over to them, Lisa dragging Tracey, who could only stare back at her immobilised brothers in shock and awe.

  And they knew that Alex was dead before they reached him.

  Candy looked up at them, her face streaked with tears and smoke.

  “We’ve got to get away from here, Jay!” gasped Annie. “Those cylinders…”

  No sooner had the words passed her lips than there was a shattering roar. Light flared bright as the cylinders finally exploded. Flames spewed high, gobbling up the side of the petrol canister; a jagged shrapnel of metal hissed and clattered around them.

  “Run!” yelled Jay.

  “But where?” gasped Lisa. “The bridge has gone.”

  “Then we’ll just have to…” But Jay got no further as a horrifying sound began to issue from the burning canister. There was a noise of rending metal and of great pressurised forces about to erupt. The canister must split at any moment, releasing its entire contents. “Come on!” Jay leaned down and grabbed Candy.

  “I can’t leave him here! I can’t!”

  “Candy,” implored Annie. “We’ve got to move…”

  “Come on!” Juliet leaned down and seized one of Alex’s arms. Jay grabbed the other, a feeling of profound sorrow engulfing him. At first he’d despised the man; had later come to respect and admire his guts and his determination. But he’d arrived too late to help him. Between them, Jay and Juliet hoisted Alex’s lifeless body, an arm over each of their shoulders, and began to drag him away from the canister and deeper into the plant. Something ruptured on the other side of the canister with a ripping crack.

  Shadows leaped in the pipework and on steel containers ahead of them.

  Might a part of the Vorla still be in there, swarming and dripping on the pipes, hiding in the darkness? Waiting to drop down on them from its hiding place in a horrifying and smothering embrace?

  There was no time to think about it. They had to get away.

  Henry and Patrick Caffney were gone somewhere behind them, apparently engulfed in the flames that leapt from the cylinders and the rupturing canister as they ran on through the maze of pipes and containers. But where the hell could they run to? They were stranded on this crag, with no way off.

  The ground beneath their feet had lost its solidity.

  Suddenly, they were all pitching forward, reeling against the steel pipes and sprawling to the ground as a wave of heat hit their backs. Jay and Juliet struggled to prevent Alex from falling as, with a thundering roar, the canister finally exploded behind them. They whirled to look back, and through a maze of steel saw the hundred-foot canister erupt into a gigantic fireball as tons of burning fuel spewed out…and down, out of sight, into the Chasm.

  On the night of the community centre fire and explosion, they had heard a similar screaming. They had heard it when they’d thrown blazing torches into the Black Stuff as they’d stood by the protection of the bonfire. And they had heard it tonight when Jay had somehow managed to create the raging inferno in the ruins.

  But nothing could have prepared them for the hideous shrieking agony of the Vorla as tons of burning fuel spewed from the shattered canister and over the cliff-edge down on to the black sea. They listened and watched in shock and awe as a towering riot of exploding flame obliterated every detail of where they had struggled only moments before. Something like a gigantic black cloud was rearing behind the inferno, but this wasn’t smoke. It was a rearing mass of the Vorla itself, gushing skywards from the Chasm in a futile bid to free itself from the ocean of liquid fire that was pouring down into it. The black cloud disintegrated when it reached the peak of its desperate bid for freedom; its spiralling mass now igniting as the fuel that soaked it finally erupted like some immense firework display, filling the sky with a flaming web of liquid fire. As they watched, the screaming mass of fire was falling back into the Chasm as the canister continued to empty its contents.

  The canister next to it also exploded, then another…and another.

  A sea of fire surged in their direction.

  “Run!” yelled Jay, and knew again that there was nowhere to go.

  The Vorla might not get them, the black sea might not claim them. But this fiery red sea must either engulf them or force them off the other edge of this crag.

  Blindly and instinctively, they ran.

  The way ahead was brightly lit by the volcano behind. From all around came the shuddering roar of giant canisters as they began to rupture and split in a hellish chain reaction.

  Something droned in the sky ahead of them.

  Something that flew erratically, looping and swooping.

  Something that was burning, its wings engulfed in a fire cloud from an exploding canister as it hunted for prey below.

  “Good!” shouted Candy as they ran, her voice breaking. “Good!”

  If Simon Caffney was screaming as he tried to control his blazing microlight, the sound was lost in the thunderous roar of the inferno. Suddenly, the entire aircraft was engulfed in flame as the petrol tank exploded, that sound also dwarfed by the eruptions all around them.

  The microlight plummeted down behind the silhouetted roof of a ruined administration building, perched right on the far cliff-edge. For a moment it was gone from sight. But then it was swooping up again into plain view, trailing a blazing arc of fire as it ascended vertically. Was it, like the Vorla, reaching for the sky in a vain attempt to avoid the flames of its Hell on earth?

  It paused, silhouetted for a breathtaking moment against the utter nothingness of New Edmonville’s sky. And then it curved and fell, heading straight back to the petrol plant in a shapeless, blazing fireball.

  For a moment they hesitated. Aware of the blazing tidal wave that roared behind them, engulfing everything in its path. Now aware of the burning microlight as it headed their way.
r />   Did it make a difference now, how they were going to die?

  The fireball swooped down out of sight.

  Its impact on the fractured fuel container next to the administration block was instantaneous. The canister exploded like a miniature atom bomb, triggering the containers on either side. The darkness beyond the far edge of the crag was obliterated. Until now, there had been no sun in New Edmonville. Now everything was lit up with the power of a dozen suns as the canisters exploded, disgorging their flaming contents on all sides. Another tidal wave of liquid fire engulfed the elaborate network of pipes and fences ahead as it surged in their direction. In moments the sea of fire on all sides would engulf them.

  They staggered to a halt, looking all around at the blazing inferno of which they were the centre.

  Death was seconds away.

  Jay and Juliet lowered Alex to the ground. Candy said: “Thank you,” and cradled his lifeless body in her arms again as she knelt on the tarmac. Such a civilised thank you, as if someone had passed the sugar, or moved a coat so that someone could take up a vacant seat. And because of that, so heart-rending.

  Annie and Lisa embraced, Lisa still holding on to Tracey’s hand—as if she were one of the other children she had lost, her own two sons and Robin. Tracey weaved from side to side as she clung to her hand, an eighteen-year-old woman acting like a four-year-old who needed the toilet. Her eyes remained fixed on the ground. Had a lifetime in the Caffney household, her new life in the Vorla’s New World and the violence and terror of the past two days finally turned her mind?

  Jay and Juliet turned from the sight of the burning tidal wave, holding each other close as it engulfed the place where Damon had met his terrible end. They waited for their own end to come.