Lost Souls

by Seth Patrick

  ‘But you knew some things,’ said Jonah.

  ‘I did. I knew about the sunlight, and Larry put these in place to ease my mind, with a generator in the basement.’ She gestured to the lights high on the ceiling. ‘Buying time, Larry said, but I think he was humouring me.’

  ‘He trusts your judgement,’ said Jonah.

  ‘My judgement?’ she said, shaking her head. ‘It was my judgement that got me into this. I believed in what Michael was doing.’

  ‘Michael Andreas was a good man, Tess. And strong. I can’t imagine what it would have taken to suppress the creature possessing him, long enough to try to destroy it.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Tess, sadly. ‘He’s still inside. You realize that, don’t you? The darkness that took him, it consumes souls, corrupts them until they’re just another part of it, but Michael is still alive. He must see everything it does, powerless to stop it.’ She smiled, tears in her eyes, her gaze drifting off. ‘People used to read more into our relationship than was there, but it was a simple love. I would have done anything for him. If I could do one last thing, it would be to bring him peace.’ She looked at Jonah. ‘I have to face it, sooner or later. I have to do whatever I can to grant him that.’

  ‘Maybe when you’re better, Tess,’ he said. ‘When you’ve got your strength back. But we have options now. We have to see where they lead.’ The image came to him of Lucas Silva’s terrified face, and the faces of his wife and child. He could see Tess’s troubled expression, and suspected she was thinking the same thing.

  We have options now.

  But at what cost?

  *

  By the time darkness fell that evening, Never’s quest to improve the heating had paid off, Kendrick having given him five minutes of closely supervised time online to hunt down advice on the model of boiler. ‘I did also hit some things,’ admitted Never, but nobody was complaining. While the house was far from cosy, the chilly bite had gone from the air.

  Kendrick remained surly and untalkative all day, and although the others avoided mentioning Silva and the ongoing interrogation, Jonah presumed it was foremost on their minds. He wondered how Never was dealing with it, as the one to have suffered the most. Here they were, complicit in the torture of another man, telling themselves that he was the enemy, knowing that doing anything to stop it would put their own lives at risk and undermine their chances at defeating Andreas.

  The unconscionable took so little effort to justify, Jonah thought.

  As darkness fell, Kendrick was with them in the kitchen making himself some coffee when his phone rang. He put the phone to his ear. ‘Yes?’ he said, sounding hopeful. Then his expression changed, and with it the mood in the room: he looked anxious. ‘Power’s out? How long?’

  Kendrick sat quickly and put the phone on speaker, placing it in front of him.

  ‘Two minutes,’ said the voice on the other end of the line. It sounded like the bearded man Kendrick had spoken to the night before. ‘Ako went to the basement to see what the problem is. Nash is here with me.’

  ‘Have you had any problems with the power before?’ asked Kendrick.

  ‘None,’ said the man. ‘That’s why I called you. It doesn’t feel right.’

  ‘Get Nash to take a look out an upstairs window,’ said Kendrick. ‘Check how widespread the power outage is.’

  They heard muffled speaking, then a shout. ‘She says the streetlights are on.’

  Kendrick thought: four long seconds. He came to a decision. ‘You need to get out of there,’ said Kendrick, tense. ‘Now.’

  ‘Yes, sir,’ said the man. ‘Ako!’ he shouted. ‘We’re leaving.’

  Another voice, a woman: ‘Something’s outside.’

  There was a loud thump. ‘Front door! Front door!’ came a shout, followed by another thump and the sound of splintering wood.

  Kendrick closed his eyes as the gunfire started, rapid bursts interspersed with barked commands, shouts. Then a man screaming, desperate and terrified. The screaming went on and on, not stopping, sounding more and more strangled, then wet.

  Kendrick ended the call. He sat, intense and silent, worrying his thumbnail as he thought hard.

  ‘Do your friends know our location?’ asked Tess urgently. Kendrick didn’t reply. ‘Larry!’

  ‘Andreas’s people will be able to get nothing from them,’ he said. ‘They can reel off a thousand decoy addresses, useless to Andreas.’

  Jonah found it horribly unnerving to see just how shaken Kendrick was. Something else was unnerving him, too. ‘But how could they have been tracked down?’ he said.

  ‘The shadows must be able to find each other after all,’ said Kendrick. ‘We’d considered that unlikely, but this isn’t something we could risk trying again.’ He looked at Jonah. ‘Happy now?’

  Jonah glared at him. ‘You think I’m glad your people are hurt, or dead? Fuck you.’

  Long seconds went by before Never broke the impasse. ‘This isn’t going to help us,’ he said. He looked at Kendrick. ‘How many people do you have loyal to you? If Andreas does get his machine built, can they destroy it?’

  Kendrick shook his head. ‘If we use up every advantage we have to destroy the machine, I suspect they’d be able to rebuild it quickly.’ Jonah could hear the frustration growing in Kendrick’s voice.

  ‘Attack Andreas directly, then,’ said Never. ‘There has to be a way for—’

  ‘Stop!’ shouted Kendrick. ‘Stop it. I need to think. Yammering in my fucking ear doesn’t help. I just need to think.’ He went upstairs again, a cloud of agitation around him.

  ‘He’ll come up with something,’ said Tess, looking exhausted. ‘He always has backup plans up his sleeve.’

  ‘Given that his last plan involved kidnap and torture,’ said Never, ‘I’m not sure I want to know.’

  Tess ignored the comment and stood.

  ‘Are you going to talk to him?’ said Jonah.

  She shook her head. There was something about her that worried him, something resigned. ‘No,’ she said. ‘I think I’ll try and get some sleep.’

  ‘Is she OK?’ said Never once she’d gone. ‘She really doesn’t look well.’

  ‘She’s not,’ said Jonah. ‘Maybe sleep is what she needs most.’

  *

  As the night wore on, he tried not to think about any of it. Their future, whether he liked it or not, was in Kendrick’s hands, and there was nothing Jonah could do to contribute. While Never flicked between channels on the TV, Jonah attempted to read, struggling through sentence by sentence, not really connecting with the words. He gave up, and instead turned his eye to the television and the bland distractions Never had found.

  As midnight approached, he was slipping in and out of a welcome doze when a sound wrenched him into sudden awareness.

  Tess was screaming.

  45

  Jonah ran upstairs with Never on his heels. As he reached Tess’s bedroom door Kendrick was just going inside.

  Her screams had been heartrending, with the same visceral punch of those wet-sounding cries they’d heard over the phone earlier. Panic, desperation and terror. The screams broke down into gasping sobs. Jonah entered the room and saw Tess clutching Kendrick so tightly her knuckles were white.

  ‘It’s OK,’ Kendrick was saying. ‘You’re safe.’

  She looked up, trembling. ‘It was so frightened,’ she said. ‘So alone. And then –’ She closed her eyes, shaking. When finally she opened them again, she looked at Kendrick, terrified. ‘It talked to me,’ she said.

  *

  She paused for a moment, composing herself, then stood and walked across the room, picking up a bottle of pills from a table. She shook out two capsules and swallowed them dry. ‘I didn’t take my medication,’ she said. ‘I had to try. We had so little time, I had to. Then, as I dreamed, it came to me. The Elder was frightened, and it was angry. It showed me terrible things . . .’ She paused, staring ahead of herself. She looked at Kendrick, drained. ‘Terrible things. It
was punishing me for abandoning it, I think, but it was so scared. It thought it was being watched, and . . .’ She tailed off, closing her eyes, visibly trembling.

  Kendrick looked at Jonah, accusation on his face. ‘Was this you? Did you tell her to do this?’

  Jonah shook his head, raising his voice. ‘Don’t you dare try and duck out of this, Kendrick. You were the one who brought up the idea, the one who kept planting the seed.’

  They were face to face, now, both voices growing louder as they bickered back and forth.

  From behind them, Tess spoke in an exhausted voice. ‘The rise,’ she started, but she was ignored by them both.

  ‘Hey,’ said Never, ‘can you two shut it? Tess is—’

  They ignored him, too, until he stood between them and yelled: ‘For fuck’s sake, shut up!’ He turned and gestured to Tess; Jonah and Kendrick, shamefaced, looked at her.

  ‘The rise,’ she said. ‘That’s when it’s vulnerable, the only time it will be. The shadows are part of the whole, but so is what’s inside Andreas. Just a part. The connection it has with the bulk of its power has to be severed. Destroy the body of the vessel when it attempts its rise, and the connection could be closed forever.’

  ‘The body of the vessel . . .’ said Kendrick. ‘You mean Andreas?’

  Tess nodded.

  ‘How do we even know we can kill him?’ said Jonah.

  Tess looked at him. ‘It nearly died the last time, in the fire. It was frightened. It hates you, I could feel it. I could—’ Fear returned to her face; her hands went to her mouth. ‘Oh God, I could feel it,’ she said, still looking at Jonah. ‘What if it sensed me? What if it saw me? If they found Silva’s shadow, what if they can find the Elder I carry? Maybe that’s why it’s been so afraid. Afraid of being seen.’ She turned to Kendrick, panic rising. ‘I could feel it! What if they’re coming? What if they’re coming for us?’

  Kendrick threw Jonah a look; if the team who’d taken Silva had been found through the presence of the shadow, what did that mean? They couldn’t know what was possible. ‘Nothing’s coming, Tess,’ said Kendrick. ‘You woke up disoriented, that’s all. There’s no need to panic. If they could trace the Elder, they’d have found you long ago.’

  Tess shook her head. ‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘I don’t know. But it felt like something was close. Watching me.’

  Kendrick stood and went to the hall, Jonah and Never following him. ‘OK,’ he said. ‘We need to keep calm. She’s had a scare, so it’s natural for her to feel spooked. But she’s got me spooked too. Maybe they can find the Elder, maybe they can’t, but we’ve done all we can here and it’s time to move on. Agreed?’ Jonah and Never nodded. Kendrick stepped back into Tess’s room. ‘Forty minutes, then we’re going,’ he said. ‘We don’t take the chance.’ Tess nodded back, relieved.

  With little to pack, Jonah and Never threw on sweatshirts and a coat then stood in the kitchen waiting, Never keeping one eye trained on the monitor that showed the feeds from the external CCTV.

  ‘This is just a precaution, right?’ Jonah said.

  ‘Of course it is,’ said Never, not moving his eyes from the screen.

  Soon, Tess came down the stairs with a small backpack. It was another fifteen minutes before Kendrick joined them, with a large black carryall that gave a heavy thump as he put it on the kitchen table. ‘Two more bags from the cellar,’ said Kendrick. ‘Ten minutes, twenty at most. Then we’re out of here.’

  ‘There’s, uh, a van approaching outside,’ said Never, pointing at the CCTV monitor. ‘On the road.’ He flinched a little under the stare Kendrick aimed at him.

  ‘I told you not to panic,’ said Kendrick. ‘It’s a public road. Even at this time of night we get vehicles passing.’

  ‘This one’s going very slowly,’ said Never.

  They looked at the screen and watched in silence as the vehicle drew closer to the house, curiously slow, reaching the end of the driveway. Every breath in the room was held.

  The van continued past, speeding up. Jonah breathed out, feeling the relief. Kendrick’s expression, however, had darkened.

  ‘Get the generator started,’ he said to Never, urgency in his voice. With a nod, Never headed to the basement. Kendrick turned to Jonah. ‘Check the shutters are secure upstairs,’ he said. ‘I’ll check down. Tess, keep an eye on the cameras.’

  Jonah turned to move just as the lights dimmed momentarily. They all shared a look, then Kendrick reached into the carryall on the table. He pulled out a flashlight and a gun and offered them to Jonah.

  Jonah took the flashlight but declined the gun. ‘Is that even any use?’ he said.

  ‘Sure,’ said Kendrick. ‘Against people.’ He handed the gun to Tess.

  As Jonah went upstairs he heard the purr from below as the generator started. The sunlamps around the house started to glow, switched at a low setting. In each room he checked that the shutters had already been put in place. Everything seemed fine.

  He went back down to the kitchen. ‘All secure upstairs,’ he said, then got close enough to Kendrick for Tess to be out of earshot. He kept his voice low. ‘If it’s them, we don’t stand a chance, do we?’ All he could think of was the sound of Kendrick’s team under attack, a group of trained professionals defeated in seconds.

  ‘There’s always a chance,’ said Kendrick. ‘And anything you do that buys you time is worthwhile.’

  ‘Time? For what?’

  Kendrick’s smile was almost a grimace, and there was more than a hint of crazy to it. ‘You’ll see,’ he said.

  The sunlamps suddenly faded, then brightened again.

  ‘It’s OK,’ said Kendrick. ‘It’s just a little jittery when it’s started up.’

  The sunlamps faded completely and the purr of the generator stopped dead. Then the main house light dimmed, almost to nothing. Flashlight beams pierced the gloom.

  ‘Stay with Tess,’ said Kendrick. ‘I’ll help Never.’ He ran to the cellar.

  A few seconds later they heard the generator splutter, coming back on but sounding uneven. The lights and sunlamps came back, brightening slowly. Relieved, Jonah switched off the flashlight.

  There was a thump from upstairs. Jonah and Tess looked at each other. They waited for a few seconds, listening, but there was silence. ‘Stay here,’ said Jonah. ‘I’m going to check. It’s probably nothing.’

  ‘If it’s nothing,’ said Tess, wary, ‘then ignore it.’

  But Jonah was already bounding up the stairs. He was fired up by the need to prove to himself that something had simply fallen over, maybe something he’d knocked when he was checking the shutters, because whatever Kendrick said about buying time, if they’d really been found, there was no hope for them.

  ‘Jonah,’ Tess called, unnerved.

  ‘I’ll be two seconds.’ He went from room to room, and each shutter was exactly as it had been. The house was still secure.

  He was in his own bedroom when the sunlamps darkened again; the main house lights dimmed and flared before going out. His bravura suddenly seemed like a terrible idea, his feet feeling heavy now. He put his flashlight back on and went to the corridor. As he backed towards the stairs, the sound of smashing glass came from behind him: the bathroom, its door wide open.

  He swung the flashlight. The bathroom window had no shutter, but it was miniscule, two iron bars running vertically within the frame. There was a hole in the glass, now. Jonah strode over and closed the door, unable to shake off the paranoid sense that he’d felt something scuttle past him.

  He swung the beam of the flashlight left and right. The filament of the sunlamp above his head glowed a fraction then brightened. He could hear the wheezing splutter of the struggling generator, and the house lights came on again.

  He ran downstairs to the kitchen.

  ‘Everything OK?’ said Tess, looking anxious. ‘I heard something smash. And the lights keep—’ The lights dimmed on cue but came up again. Tess raised her eyebrows. ‘That. I wish that’
d stop.’

  Jonah suddenly felt cold. Dear God, he felt cold. He could feel it. It was in the room with them.

  ‘Tess,’ he said. Panic was close to overpowering him. He tried to stay calm, to move slowly. ‘I think we should get to the cellar.’ His eyes darted around the room, then settled on Tess. She nodded, seeing the fear in his eyes.

  As she stood, all the lights went out. In the flashlight beam Jonah saw it scuttle forward from the darkness near his feet, crossing the floor to behind Tess. Then it unfolded, opening out into a creature the height of the ceiling, all in the space of a breath.

  It was huge, larger than the one Torrance had sent at them. It had just been waiting for the dark to return. For its chance to come.

  Jonah stared, frozen. Tess could see the look on his face, see where his eyes were fixed. She turned and saw, and moved to run.

  But it had her. One vast dark arm swept her off the ground, held her despite her struggling, the hand of the shadow clamped over her terrified face. Jonah thought of Mary Connart, and of the horrifying wounds these creatures could give by touch, but Tess tore free briefly to call his name and her face was unmarked. The hand seemed only there to silence her cries. The creature didn’t want her dead.

  ‘Kendrick!’ Jonah screamed, his inertia overcome. ‘Get the lights back on! Get them on full power!’