by Seth Patrick
Jonah could feel his eyes sting, and knew he had to get out of the reach of the fumes before they became debilitating. The door to the upper corridor was open; he carried Tess’s body out and set it down on the floor. The bodies of the other acolytes were on the ground, all as dead as those Jonah had come across in the control room.
It was a few minutes before Kendrick emerged and took off the gas mask. He had a long cut down one cheek, his left eye vividly red. He looked at Tess for a moment, then at Jonah. ‘Andreas is no more,’ he said. ‘For what it’s worth.’ Kendrick seemed to steel himself before speaking again. ‘Sly?’ he asked. Jonah could almost hear the prayer in his voice.
‘She’s injured,’ he said. ‘She can’t walk. Downstairs, across the circle, in—’
Kendrick was already moving.
Jonah waited in silence. Eventually Kendrick and Sly were there, Sly leaning on Kendrick for support, taking each step as a hop on her good foot.
‘We would’ve been faster,’ said Kendrick, ‘if she’d let me carry her.’
‘Nobody carries me,’ said Sly. She saw Tess’s body and was silent for a moment. Then: ‘Has anyone tried the radio again?’
‘I lost mine a while back,’ said Kendrick.
Sly handed hers to Jonah. Wary, he pressed the button. The static had decreased significantly, but it was still there, still with the eerie almost-intelligible background noises.
‘Annabel,’ he said. He waited.
‘We’re here,’ said Annabel, relief in her voice. ‘What happened?’
‘We’re on our way out,’ said Jonah. ‘Andreas and his people are dead.’
‘Tess?’ said Annabel.
‘She didn’t make it.’ Jonah paused. ‘Is Never—’
There was silence, and Jonah felt hope drain away. ‘You need to hurry,’ she said.
They took the direct route to the security room, the deadlocked Lab Two door opening from inside without a hitch. Lying on the floor, Never was unconscious. Annabel took Jonah to the side as Kendrick helped Sly over to Never, along with the medical essentials and saline taken from the surgical room. Kendrick started hunting for something in the cupboards.
‘Hold this,’ Sly told Jonah, handing him a bag of saline she’d hooked up a line to. She quickly put a cannula into Never’s arm.
‘Got it,’ said Kendrick, brandishing a set of keys for a security patrol jeep. ‘We need to leave.’
Sly looked at him and shook her head. ‘We need to wait.’
Kendrick opened his mouth, then closed it again.
After ten minutes and one full bag of saline, Never’s eyes flickered open. He looked at Sly, barely conscious.
‘Hey,’ said Sly.
‘Hey,’ said Never.
She looked at him, appraising. She smiled, a genuine one.
Kendrick took Jonah and Annabel, retracing the path they’d used when they’d entered the facility. In the corpse storage unit they found two gurneys and returned to the security room, carefully lifting Never onto one of them. Jonah used the other for Tess’s body, and they made their way out to the patrol jeep.
The air outside was bone dry, but fresh. Jonah breathed it in. Once Never and Sly were safely in the back seat of the jeep, Kendrick threw Annabel the keys. ‘You and Jonah will have to share the driving,’ he said, nodding to his strapped arm. Annabel nodded and got inside.
Jonah insisted on putting Tess’s body in the back of the jeep himself. He closed the tailgate and turned to look at the building they’d just left. Peaceful, now; impossible to think of how much death lay inside.
‘What about the revivers?’ said Jonah. ‘You saw them, didn’t you? They were part of the machine . . .’
Kendrick nodded. ‘There’s nothing you can do for them.’
‘But we could find a way to switch off the cryogenic chambers, and put them out of their . . .’ He stopped, seeing the expression on Kendrick’s face: grim, and earnest.
‘I already did.’ They stood in silence for a moment before Kendrick spoke again. ‘Do you think all the shadows died? Even those who weren’t here?’
Jonah shook his head.
‘Me neither,’ said Kendrick. ‘We need to go. I don’t doubt for a second that they know something went wrong. They’re on their way here, right now.’
Kendrick got into the jeep, but Jonah paused, looking again at the building. He thought of what Andreas had said in the chamber: The door is open now, Jonah. It will not shut.
He had felt it then, and could feel it now: their mission had not been the success they had hoped for. The flow of power had not been halted, not completely.
Andreas was gone, but it wasn’t enough, because Andreas had only ever been a vessel. Whether that specific vessel could ever come back or not wasn’t the important thing, not really, because there were others out there ready to take its place. Jonah thought of them, all those who carried shards of what had been within Andreas. Heggarty. Silva’s family in Bethlehem. He didn’t want to think about how many there could be, let alone how many were in positions of power.
Shadows were everywhere. The door was open.
Tess’s final words came to him, then.
Killing Andreas had bought time to find an answer. He had no idea how long. Maybe months. Maybe years. Where would they even begin?
But they would try, however long they had. Because there was no other choice.
The Beast is coming, Tess had said.
Be ready.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Thanks as always to my editor Julie Crisp, and my agent Luigi Bonomi. When I want to remind myself of how lucky I’ve been since starting down the writer’s road, I don’t have to think further than them.
Also, to my wife and kids for all the glorious chaos.
Finally, I want to thank the writers whose work I grew up with. The things that scare you as a child are often so much richer because the hard walls of reality have yet to solidify around your imagination. These are the formative fears, the ones that burn themselves into you wholesale and return to haunt you again and again: sometimes treasured, sometimes dreaded.
Those old ghosts have inspired parts of Lost Souls; terrors and images looming up after decades of mutation in the murk. Nigel Kneale, Alan Garner, Stephen King, Clive Barker, Alan Moore and others planted the seeds, as did the authors who contributed to the many ghost and horror anthologies I devoured as a child – in particular Ronald Chetwynd-Hayes, whose gleefully dark tales I always relished.
Praise for The Reviver
‘A brilliant, original and very scary concept – which Seth Patrick carries off with chilling aplomb’
Peter James
‘A highly original story, skilfully told, a thriller that twists and turns all the way to the end’
Simon Kernick
‘A thrilling high-concept book that crosses numerous genres. Chilling and emotional in all the right places’
Mark Charan Newton
‘An excellent combination of Afterlife and CSI that’ll keep you up late with the lights very definitely on . . Highly recommended’
Neal Asher
‘A skilfully plotted and compulsively readable supernatural thriller’
Guardian
‘Supernatural thrillers don’t get much better . . . maintains the suspense throughout’
Publishers Weekly
‘A cracking, page-turning thriller . . . an impressive, intelligent and exciting debut’
Lancashire Evening Post
‘This is an excellent genre-crossing story that is both well-written and original’
Northern Scot
‘This is a gutsy book . . . an interesting debut’
Booklist
‘Powerful, haunting and frighteningly credible’
Press Association
‘Seth Patrick takes a scary and brilliantly original concept and creates a debut novel that will thrill and chill you from start to finish. [The] Reviver shows what a talented writer Patrick is; the un
thinkable seems plausible in his capable hands’
Ulster Tatler
‘Impressive, intelligent and well-crafted . . . Dark, accomplished, exceptional and rare’
Milo Rambles
‘The reading experience is resolutely thrilling, and the chatter, especially where Never’s concerned, is certainly snappy . . . I really enjoyed reading it’
The Speculative Scotsman
‘A fast-paced book with plenty of interesting plot details to keep you turning the pages in rapid succession . . . a very inventive novel and with great characters and a very tidy plot, it’s hard to see what’s not to like.’
SFCrowsnest.org.uk
LOST SOULS
Seth Patrick was born in Northern Ireland.
An Oxford mathematics graduate, he spent thirteen years working in an award-winning games company before becoming a full-time author. He lives in England with his wife and two children. Lost Souls is his third novel.
You can follow him on Twitter:
@SethPatrickUK
By Seth Patrick
The Reviver
The Returned
Lost Souls
First published 2015 by Pan Books
This electronic edition published 2015 by Pan Books
an imprint of Pan Macmillan
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Associated companies throughout the world
www.panmacmillan.com
ISBN 978-0-230-76502-3
Copyright © Seth Patrick, 2015
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